


Tell Her About It

by mycanonnevercame



Series: The Way to Stay in Someone’s Soul [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Abduction, Action/Adventure, Also there are things I am leaving out of the tags because Spoilers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Karen Page, Because it’s me, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, POV Multiple, Sharing a Bed, This is... a trip, Tranquilizers, a little bit of, but here are the general warnings, if you’re reading Punisher fic then you know what you’re getting into I assume
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycanonnevercame/pseuds/mycanonnevercame
Summary: Frank Castle wakes up in a basement with an annoying 80s pop song playing on a loop. What follows are the craziest two days of his life.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Series: The Way to Stay in Someone’s Soul [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709101
Comments: 24
Kudos: 90





	Tell Her About It

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for nothing.

_Tell her about it, tell her everything you feel..._

Frank wakes up slowly, dragged from sleep by the sounds of an unbearably peppy eighties pop tune. He feels like death — head pounding, mouth dry, eyes gritty. He doesn’t think he could stand even if he wanted to. He doesn’t remember drinking last night, or falling asleep sitting up at his tiny kitchen table. His chairs really aren’t designed for sleeping. He opens his eyes with an effort.

He’s not in his kitchen.

The place is obviously in a basement, the small room dark and cold and damp, a single bare bulb over his head the only illumination. He’s sitting, wrists and ankles cuffed to a metal chair. There’s a door in the wall behind him and a photo stuck to the one in front of him, the image taken from a distance, slightly grainy but still easily recognizable as him and Karen.

Frank leans forward in his chair to study the photo. Judging by his hair (as in, he _has_ hair in the photo — he started shaving his head a couple weeks ago) and the pretty blue blouse Karen is wearing, it was taken three weeks ago. The last time he saw her, in their usual spot. He remembers thinking that she looked especially pretty that day, the blue matching her eyes, the breeze off the East River bringing a flush to her cheeks.

Whoever did this clearly knows about his connection with Karen, which means they just signed their own death warrant. This is exactly why he’s been keeping her at arms length. He knew it was only a matter of time before someone threatened her because of him. It’s finally happened and here he is, chained to a chair like an idiot while Karen— no. _No_ , he has to believe that she’s okay. They wouldn’t go to this much trouble holding him hostage if— if they didn’t need something from her.

They must want something from Karen. He feels a sick sinking feeling in his gut. He’s been trying to avoid being important enough to anyone to be used like this. He’d like to think that Karen would tell his captors, whoever they are, to fuck off, that she would shrug and go back to her life and leave him to the wolves, but he knows her better than that. He knows how many people she’s lost over the years: her family; her mentor at the paper, Ben; Murdock. Even Frank himself, more than once. She won’t leave him to rot now.

He tests his bonds, and is unsurprised to find them rock-fucking-solid. The goddamn chair is even bolted to the floor. He might be able to get out of the cuffs on his wrists, if he’s willing to dislocate his thumbs, but that still leaves the ankle cuffs to deal with. Plus then he’d have dislocated thumbs, which he can work with but they still leave him at a disadvantage.

He figures that for now, the only thing to do is wait. Whoever did this clearly wants something, and he’s stuck until he finds out what that is and who they are.

Billy Joel finally finishes dispensing relationship advice and Frank breathes a sigh of relief as the song fades out.

It immediately starts over.

“What the fuck,” he says.

Three hours later, the song is still playing. He’s heard it dozens of times by now — he lost count somewhere after thirty five.

He’s still suffering the worst hangover of his life, and he wonders what the hell his abductors gave him. The headache is only compounded by the blaring pop song, and he’s this close to a mental break when he finally hears a sound at the door. Someone tries the knob, but it must be locked because the door doesn’t open. He cranes his neck, trying to see what’s happening. It makes his head pound even more, but he can’t just sit there with his back to the door.

He can just barely hear the sounds of someone fiddling with the lock — picking it? — over Billy Joel’s latest repetition of Tell Her About It.

_Let her know you need her,_ Billy Joel croons. _Let her know how much she means._

If he never hears this song again it’ll be too soon.

The sounds at the door still, and Frank waits, hoping whoever it is isn’t about to come in and blow his head off. For several long moments the only sounds are the song coming to an end and starting over yet again. Frank can’t help the groan that escapes him. Can his executioner hurry it up so he can stop listening to this god forsaken song already?

The door slams open. Frank whips around in his chair in time to see Karen coming around the corner like a trained combatant, gun sweeping out in front of her as she clears the room. Her hands are steady, and he recognizes her .380 from two years ago. She’s loaded for bear, extra ammo tucked into the pouches on the heavy body armor she’s wearing over dark clothes. He’d smile if he wasn’t so fucking horrified to see her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” He demands. “What if it’s a trap? You gotta go, Karen, you gotta leave _now_.”

“Frank,” she says, her voice soft and tremulous with relief. “Thank god.” She shoves her pistol into the holster on her hip and drops into a crouch before him, her hands reaching for him. “Did they hurt you? Do you know who they are or what they want?” She’s touching him like he’s important, her hands running over his arms, his torso, his shoulders, reaching up to cup his face while she asks her questions, completely ignoring what he said.

“Christ, would you listen to me?” He growls, staring into her eyes, willing her to understand his urgency. “You shouldn’t be here. You should get as far away from me as you can.”

“No,” she says, like he just said the most stupid sentence she’s ever heard spoken aloud. “I came here for you, I’m not leaving you here.” She reaches up and fiddles with her hair for a moment where it’s piled on the back of her head, coming away with a bobby pin. She immediately goes to work on unlocking his handcuffs. “What’s with the music?”

Frank snorts, because he’s been wondering the same thing. “Psychological warfare,” he guesses. “It’s fucking working, I was ready to crack before you came in.” She smiles up at him and he’s seized by the sudden urge to take Billy Joel’s advice and tell Karen how he feels about her. He shakes off the impulse — now is not the time; he has to get her somewhere safe _now_ , before it’s too late and whoever did this finds her here, with him.

The cuffs clatter as they fall from his limbs one by one, and he tries to stand. Emphasis on _tries_. His legs are unsteady and he sways into Karen. She catches him, grunting slightly as his weight settles onto her.

“Sorry,” he mutters, distracted by the scent of her perfume. She leans into him for a moment, arms tightening around his waist as she presses the side of her face against his. She pulls away too soon.

“Come on, we should get out of here,” she says, shifting to get her shoulder under his, her arm around his waist. She reaches out with her free hand and rips the photo off the wall, stuffing it into her pocket, before pulling her gun out of the holster.

“Ready?” She asks, and at his nod they make their way slowly to the door.

“How’d you find me?”

Karen props him up against the wall next to the door so she can check their exit. He hates being this helpless, but whatever drug he’d been given really did a number on him and he’s stiff from sitting in that chair for so long. He’s having a hard enough time just remaining upright. Better to let her handle things — even if he didn’t already trust her more than almost anyone else he knows, she’s doing a surprisingly professional job of rescuing him. It makes him wonder what kind of team building exercises the Bulletin has been putting their reporters through.

“It wasn’t that hard,” she says, frowning worriedly as she peeks out. “A blocked number sent me a text with that photo and told me that if I didn’t get here in time you’d be dead. You’re exactly where they said you’d be.”

“Definitely a fucking trap,” he says, and she nods. “You shouldn’t have come.” The look she gives him could freeze hell.

“Stop saying that.” He opens his mouth to protest but stops when her glare somehow intensifies. “There isn’t a world in which I’d let you die, Frank. Just let me save your sorry ass, okay?” She doesn’t wait for a response and drags him out the door.

They make it down three hallways before shit hits the fan, Karen confidently checking her corners and hauling him as quickly as possible through the subterranean maze. They’re just turning a corner when a gunshot rings out behind them, hitting the wall where Frank was leaning half a second ago. Karen shoves him the rest of the way around the corner and spins around to fire back. He crashes to his knees without losing sight of her, waiting for his worst nightmare to play out before his eyes.

She takes three shots in quick succession and he can tell by the grim look of satisfaction on her face that she hit her mark. His relief that she hasn’t been shot wars with guilt and nausea, because this isn’t something he ever wanted Karen to do for him. She’s a good person, maybe the _best_ person, and she shouldn’t have to kill people for him, a mass murderer who’s used her as bait and a human shield, an asshole who’s held her at arms’ length for years.

Frank lurches to his feet as she reaches for him, and he lets her get her shoulder under his arm again. He should still be urging her to run, to leave him behind, even if he knows she’ll never do it, but instead he tightens his grip on her and focuses on moving as quickly as possible so they can get the fuck out of there. It’s getting a little easier the more he moves, though it’s unlikely he’ll be winning any footraces anytime soon.

They skid to a stop in front of an elevator.

“Seriously?” He asks her. Tactically speaking, taking the elevator is a terrible idea.

“Would you rather climb three flights of stairs with armed gunmen after us? In your condition?”

Okay, she has a point. He’s still not happy about it.

He can hear loud footsteps and angry voices made unintelligible by echoes, but they sound far enough off that he doesn’t think they’ll be rounding the corner anytime soon. It actually sounds like they might be a little lost, unable to navigate the rabbit warren of tunnels down here.

The elevator arrives with a soft ding and they get in after making sure gunmen aren’t going to come barreling out, guns blazing. Frank hits the button for street level. Karen props him in the corner and he expects her to move away, but she doesn’t. She shifts so they’re face to face. The wall is holding him up more than she is, but their hips are pressed together, her vest a hard barrier between their torsos, and she’s so close he can just make out her freckles where they’re hiding under her makeup. She looks tired and sad and determined. She’s flushed with exertion and her hair is falling out of its bun. She’s beautiful and fierce and she breaks his goddamn heart.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He means for everything — for always dragging her into his mess, for getting kidnapped and drugged into uselessness, for getting her into a situation she has to shoot her way out of.

“I’d do it again,” she says. He shakes his head. He doesn’t want this for her.

“I would,” she insists. “You have to know that, Frank.” The look she gives him is so open and vulnerable, his heart skips a beat.

“Karen—“

The elevator dings again and they both freeze. Karen presses him further into the corner, out of view of anyone in the building’s lobby.

“What are you doing?” He growls, even though he _knows_ what she’s doing.

“I’m the one with the body armor,” she says. He scowls at her.

“Body armor doesn’t make you invincible, Karen.”

She stares at him, radiating incredulity. “I cannot believe _you_ just said that to _me_.”

“That was different.”

“ _How?_ ”

“It just was.”

She looks like she wants to argue more but instead she grits her teeth and drags him out of the elevator. They’re halfway across the lobby when a giant black SUV comes to a screeching halt outside the glass front doors.

“Fuck,” Karen says.

“Side door!” He gives her a push toward the open door to their right. They make it through just as a shout rings out behind them. Frank watches over his shoulder as several armed men in tracksuits flood the lobby from both the front entrance and a door at the back that he thinks must be the stairs from the basement. He kicks the doorstop out from under the door and Karen slams it shut behind them. She reaches down and jams the wedge of wood back under the door. It probably won’t be enough to keep their pursuers from getting through, but it should slow them down. She reaches for Frank again and they both take off down the long hallway they’re now in. At the far end is a door, and Frank can see daylight through the small window in it.

“When did you piss off the mob?” Karen gasps out. Frank can only shake his head, too winded to answer.

They skid to a halt at the door, and Frank tries to get a look at the alley through the little window. It’s too small to really be any use, so he cracks the door open and peeks out into a deserted alley. The air outside is warm and the sun is shining brightly directly overhead, an incongruously cheerful day for their current circumstances. It’s his first indication of how long he was out. The last thing he remembers was leaving work, which must have been at least yesterday afternoon. He’s lost nearly an entire day.

Karen pushes the door open a little wider and looks out with him. Everything is quiet, the mafia guys apparently not smart enough to think of sending someone around the outside of the building. He can still hear them, banging away on the jammed door, shouting in Russian.

“Where are you parked?”

Karen looks back toward the lobby, getting her bearings. “Across the street, the alley two buildings down,” she says, pointing out the door. Frank has caught his breath by this point, so he looks at Karen, a question in his eyes.

“We should make a break for it,” he says. She nods.

“Can you run?”

“I can make it,” he says. He might have to power through on sheer determination, but he’s not going to weigh Karen down. “You don’t stop for anything, you hear me? I mean it, Karen. Don’t stop until you’re in your car.” She holds his gaze and nods, for once not arguing with him.

“Did you bring an extra gun?”

Karen wordlessly reaches behind her back and comes up with a Glock. He takes it and chambers a round, holding Karen’s gaze, hoping this isn’t the end for them both. He shoves the door open and looks both ways down the alley. It’s still deserted.

“Come on,” he says, reaching for her free hand. She takes it in a grip tight enough to hurt, but he doesn’t mind. He runs as fast as he can down the alley, Karen pacing him easily. They make it out of the alley and halfway across the street before they hear any sounds of pursuit. Shots are fired just as they round a car parked on the opposite side of the road. One of its windows shatters and its alarm starts shrieking deafeningly.

More shots explode through the warm spring afternoon, this time coming from ahead of them. Karen doesn’t hesitate, dropping Frank’s hand and planting her feet to return fire. He turns to lay down some cover fire on their six, watching her back. Screams of pain echo behind him, and Karen taps him on the shoulder. They take off again, nearly at the mouth of the alley where Karen’s car is waiting.

A bullet ricochets off the building they’re passing and a chunk of concrete flies off and slices across Frank’s forehead. Blood pours into his eye.

“Assholes,” he mutters. Karen laughs breathlessly and they skid into the alley together. Frank stumbles a little but Karen steadies him and drags him to her car. She climbs in and doesn’t wait for him to start it. The moment he’s inside she slams into drive and peels out of the alley.

Frank slumps in his seat, exhausted. Karen drives through a dizzying mix of streets and alleys. She cuts through several parking garages and at one point pulls into a random parking space on the street and waits for ten long minutes before pulling out again. He knows the exact moment she decides they’re safe and no one is following them, because her shoulders slump and her white-knuckle grip on the wheel loosens.

“Why is the mafia after you?”

Karen blinks and glances at him. “I assumed they were after you,” she says, like it should be obvious. “You’re the one they took, after all. And I haven’t written anything about them in months, and even then it was very low level. Nothing to get excited about.”

“Maybe it’s whatever you’re working on right now that has them riled up,” he suggests.

She considers that for a moment and shakes her head. “If it was the Yakuza chasing us down back there then I might agree with you, but I really don’t have anything on the Russians right now.”

“Christ, Karen, you’re taking on the Yakuza?”

“So not the point right now, Frank. Focus.”

“Right.” He frowns. “I guess I figured, since they took me and no one was bothering to talk to me, plus that picture of us... I thought they must want something from you, and they were holding me hostage so you would get them... whatever it is.”

She thinks that over for a minute. “Information, maybe?” Another pause. “I’m not even working on anything big right now. It’s been a quiet month.”

“Nothing big,” he repeats, voice flat. “Other than the Yakuza, you mean.”

“This is why we don’t talk about work anymore,” she says. “That and you’re never around,” she adds under her breath.

Frank sighs. “You know why I have to stay away.”

“Do I?”

“ _This_ is why!” His gesture encompasses the entire situation. She bites her lip, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

“You should see the shit I get up to without your help.”

“Fuck.” He slouches down in his seat, rolling his head over to look at her. “Maybe I should.”

She bites her lip again, raises an eyebrow at him. “Yeah?”

He nods slowly. “Maybe. Yeah.”

About ten minutes later they pull into a parking spot on a quiet side street and she kills the engine. Frank looks around, but beyond recognizing that they’re in Hell’s Kitchen, he doesn’t know where they are.

“Come on,” Karen says. She reaches into the back seat for a big tote bag and climbs wearily out of the driver’s seat. She takes a moment to take off her gear and stuff everything into the bag, which she slings over her shoulder. By then he’s managed to drag himself out of the car and is leaning against the hood to keep from falling over.

“What the hell did they give you?” Karen asks, coming around to put her arm around his waist again.

“No idea, but I feel like I’ve been run over by a tank,” he says. He tries not to lean on her too hard as they make their way down the sidewalk. They cut through an alley and when they come out on the next street Frank finally recognizes where they are.

“You sure it’s safe to go back to your apartment?”

Karen shrugs against him. “I’m pretty careful,” she says. “Only about five people know where I live and one of them is dead, my address is unlisted, and I always watch for tails.” None of this surprises him. “It’s still a risk,” she adds. “But I think it’ll be okay for now. We need to regroup and take care of that cut.” Her eyes trail over his forehead and the drying blood smeared over the left side of his face. “And I _really_ want a nap. And I still think you’re the target.”

Frank nods, trusting her assessment — except maybe for that last part. Despite the fact that she’s probably right, he’s withholding judgment on which of them the mob wants dead until they get more information. He doesn’t want to let his guard down while she could still be in danger.

He’s been scanning the street carefully as they head for her apartment entrance, but he doesn’t see anything suspicious. His finely honed instincts are quiet, and they make it inside without incident.

Unfortunately for him, Karen’s apartment is a third floor walk up. It makes him glad they took the elevator earlier when they had the chance.

“Not to be dramatic,” he says on the second floor landing, leaning against the wall. “But if you wanted to leave me here to die I wouldn’t complain.” Karen stares at him for a second and starts to laugh. He cracks a smile and she laughs harder, and he chuckles, and then they’re both howling with laughter, barely holding each other up.

It takes them both several minutes to calm down, but he feels lighter, after. Karen drops her forehead to his shoulder, still giggling a little bit, and they don’t move for a while.

“That was the craziest fucking thing,” she mumbles into his chest, and he snorts.

“Yeah.” He rests his cheek on the top of her head. “We should probably get out of this stairwell,” he says, and she nods agreement. Neither of them moves.

Eventually they trudge up the remaining stairs and let themselves into Karen’s apartment.

“You want to shower first?” She asks. “I’ll find you something to wear.” She frowns at his forehead. “When you’re clean I can bandage that cut.”

“You don’t have to take care of me, you know.”

She scowls and rolls her eyes. “But I’m going to. _Someone_ should, and we both know it’s not going to be you. Go get clean.”

He opens his mouth to argue more, but what comes out instead is, “okay.”

She gives him a towel and he goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. He shucks off his dirty clothes and takes a quick shower, wishing he could stand under the hot water for the next three hours. The heat eases the stiffness in his muscles and finally eases his headache to a manageable level, and when he gets out a few minutes later he feels almost back to normal, though still exhausted. He wraps the towel around his hips and opens the door.

Karen is in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. She looks up at his quiet “hey,” and smiles.

“You look better,” she says.

“Your turn.” He gestures over his shoulder and she nods.

“There’s some clothes for you,” she says, waving at a small pile at the foot of the bed.

“Thanks.” He moves into the room and expects her to get up and go shower, but she just sits there, staring at him. “You okay?”

“You’re not going to disappear to kill the entire New York branch of the Russian mafia if I let you out of my sight, are you?”

“Hey,” he says, dropping to his knees in front of her. He sighs, because... “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. But I’m not going anywhere until we figure this thing out. Together, okay?”

The last of the tension leaves her shoulders and she closes her eyes with a nod. “Good. That’s— good.”

“Come on, go get cleaned up. I promise to still be here when you come out.”

“Okay.” She disappears into the bathroom and Frank gets dressed in the blue tshirt and pale pink sweatpants she left out for him. They must be her comfort clothes because the pants are loose on him and the shirt says Stark Enterprises Honor Scholar on the front in faded letters, both soft from years of wear. The shirt is a little snug, but not uncomfortably so.

He sits on the edge of her bed and tries not to pass out while he waits for her to get out of the shower. He gets up and starts wandering around after only a couple minutes because he’s that close to falling asleep.

Karen has a book on her bedside table — a copy of Ninefox Gambit he loaned her, the corners dog-eared and the pages full of his chicken scratch annotations. He flips through the first few pages to find she’s adding her own notes in blue pen. He’s tempted to read a few, but decides he’d rather reread the book when she’s done. He sets the book back down with a smile and wanders off to look at something else.

He finds the pot of roses on top of her dresser and shakes his head. He never really expected her to keep them. They look good, like she’s been taking care of them.

His stomach rumbles and it occurs to him that he has no idea how long it’s been since he last ate. He vaguely remembers eating his box lunch at the construction site yesterday. He heads out into Karen’s kitchen in search of takeout menus.

He’s momentarily distracted by the corkboard Karen has hanging on the kitchen wall. It’s covered in paper: photos, a few postcards, scraps of paper with notes on them — things like “yell at F for the Bronx thing next time you see him,” and “ask Ellison for a raise!!!” He reaches up and brushes his thumb over the F with a sigh. He doesn’t need her to yell at him, he already knows exactly what she’d say.

By the time he finds the menus in a drawer next to the refrigerator, he can hear Karen using a hair dryer in the bathroom. He starts sifting through the pile, looking for something close and therefore theoretically fast. There’s a nearby pizza place that sounds promising, and he reaches for his phone — which is when he realizes that he doesn’t have his phone, or his wallet for that matter. He groans in frustration, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his head in irritation.

“What’s that about?” Karen says, coming out of the bedroom in an old tshirt and shorts.

“I was about to order us something to eat,” he says. “But I don’t have a phone or money. Fucking kidnappers.” It makes her laugh.

“Don’t worry, lunch is on me,” she says, taking the menu out of his hands and pulling her phone out of her pocket.

“You spoil me.” She doesn’t answer, too busy placing their order. He leans against the counter and she comes over to him, eyes on his forehead.

“Twenty minutes,” she says when she hangs up. She reaches up, her thumb brushing gently over his skin below the cut. It feels good. A small sigh escapes him, and he leans into her touch. Her gaze drops to his. “We should bandage that,” she says.

He follows her into the bathroom and sits on the toilet while she digs under the sink for her first aid kit. She pulls antibiotic ointment and bandages from the kit. Frank holds still as she leans down to examine the cut. It’s long, but not very deep, so he doesn’t think it needs stitches. If he was on his own, he probably wouldn’t even bother with bandaging it — she was right about him not taking care of himself.

“I don’t think it needs stitches,” Karen says, echoing his thoughts. “Let me know if I’m hurting you.” She smears ointment gently over the wound, fingers moving quickly but carefully. He watches her face while she works. There’s a tiny frown between her brows. She looks tired, and he wonders if she sleeps enough, if she eats well, if she ever takes time for herself.

“What did you do to your hair?” She asks suddenly.

“Shaved it off,” he says, even though that much is obvious. “Shorter hair is easier to deal with.”

“But now you have _no_ hair.” It might be his imagination, but she almost sounds disappointed. She wipes the ointment off her fingers and reaches for a square of bandage.

“I would’ve kept some of it,” he says. “But the high-and-tight makes me a little too recognizable.”

She snorts a laugh and rolls her eyes. Runs one hand over the stubble on his head. He closes his eyes at the sensation, willing himself not to yank her into his lap and kiss her senseless. Tries to remind himself of all the reasons that’s a bad idea, with limited success. He can’t quite stop himself from leaning into her hand again, practically purring at her touch.

“Maybe I could get used to it,” she murmurs. “If you let me.”

She lets him go and cuts a piece of bandage to size, taping it over the cut. Her thumb smoothes over the tape a couple times, her fingers lingering against his skin.

“There,” she finally says, letting go. He catches her hand and gives it a squeeze.

“Thank you.”

Karen’s eyes move back to the bandage on his forehead. “Of course.”

“Not just for this,” he says. “For coming to get me. I should’ve said something sooner.”

Karen smiles softly at him and pulls him to his feet. “You did the same for me,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. And then: “Always will,” because it’s true and even though he thinks she knows, she deserves to hear it from him. And then, because he’s missed her, he slips his arms around her waist and pulls her in for a hug. Karen wraps her arms around him and holds on tight, and it’s the best Frank has felt in a long time. She presses her face into his neck and mumbles “same” against his skin and he buries his nose in her hair, still slightly damp from her shower and smelling like orange blossom.

They only break apart when the pizza arrives with a knock on the door a few minutes later. He follows her to the door and she opens it with her sidearm in hand and tucked behind her thigh, just in case. The delivery kid, however, is just that — a kid bearing pizza who takes Karen’s cash, hands the box to Frank, and disappears, all without even removing her headphones.

They eat in relative silence, both too tired to do much more than chew.

“You can have it,” Karen says when she catches him eyeing the last piece of pizza. She leans back in her chair with a sigh as Frank mumbles a thank you and demolishes the last slice.

“How’d they get you?” Karen asks when the pizza is gone and they’ve cleaned up a little.

He thinks for a minute, trying to dredge up any memory of the abduction, but there’s nothing. He vaguely remembers getting home yesterday afternoon, but everything after that is blank.

“I have no idea,” he finally says. “I don’t remember anything after getting home from work yesterday. Woke up sometime this morning strapped to that chair, listening to Billy Joel on a loop.”

Karen frowns. “I wonder what that’s about,” she says. “Maybe the song is a clue? Can you think of anything related?”

“To Billy Joel? No.” He’s not about to admit to wanting to follow the song’s advice. Besides, it’s not like whoever drugged him could have had that in mind as their end goal when they did it.

“I just wanted him to talk to her!” David says, voice cracking slightly. His hair is a little crazier than usual because he keeps raking his hands through it, and his eyes are a little wild.

Curtis takes a deep breath and prays to any god who might be listening for the strength to make it through the rest of this conversation without resorting to Frank’s methods and murdering the man in front of him.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm. “You drugged Frank, locked him in a basement, used his own torture tactics against him, and sent an untraceable message to Karen Page so she would go rescue him.”

David nods. “Mm-hmm,” he says, blue eyes wide.

“Then, somehow, Frank’s actual enemies tracked him down.”

“Yes.”

“And now they’re trying to murder him, and Karen by association.”

David nods miserably.

“All while Frank is in no condition to deal with it.”

“Right.”

“Because you _drugged him_ and _tied him to a chair_.”

“Actually, I cuffed him to the chair,” David corrects. Curtis gives him a look. “Right— not the point.”

“Do you _at least_ know who it is that’s after Frank and Karen?”

“Yes! It’s the Russian mob!” This statement is delivered with entirely too much enthusiasm, but Curtis doesn’t point that out. He rubs his hand over his face.

“Are Frank and Karen okay, at least?”

David nods. “They’re in Karen’s apartment. The Russians don’t know where it is, and I’m monitoring their cell traffic so I can warn Frank if they figure it out, and also obscuring Karen’s cell signal so no one will be able to get a lock on it.”

“You need to call him and tell him you did this,” Curtis says. “You have to tell him it was just a stupid prank, before he starts a war with the mob.”

“He’ll murder me,” David says, like that should be obvious. And, okay, he’s almost definitely right. Especially since David put Karen in danger with this stunt. That’s not something Frank is likely to let slide. “Besides, Frank doesn’t have his phone, I do. Also his wallet. And his keys.”

Curtis stares at David for a long moment, waiting for him to realize what he just said. David just stares back.

“What?”

“How are you going to warn Frank if the mafia are onto him if he doesn’t have his phone?”

David blinks. “Oh. Right. Well, I’d just warn Karen instead.”

“I still think they need to know that this all started because of something fairly innocent,” Curtis insists. “Frank’s liable to wipe out the entire Russian syndicate in the city.”

David chews on his thumbnail for a minute. “Maybe not,” he finally says. “I don’t think they know about Karen. So if we can keep it that way, maybe he won’t feel the need to kill _all_ of them.”

“So, what now?”

“Now,” Karen says on a yawn. “We take a nap. Get some sleep while we have the chance.” She stands up. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Bed‘s in there,” she says, gesturing at the bedroom door. Frank’s eyes flick over to it and back to Karen.

“I know where the bed is,” he says.

“Good, then let’s go to sleep.” She takes a few steps toward the bedroom and stops when Frank doesn’t move.

“I can— I was gonna take the couch,” he says, trying not to panic.

“No.”

“What do you mean, _no?_ ” He is not prepared for this conversation. He’s not prepared for this _entire situation_.

“I mean,” she says, with exaggerated patience, “that I won’t be able to sleep if you’re out here where you can sneak off to murder Russians the moment I pass out.”

“It’s safer if I sleep out here,” he counters. Sure, safer for his heart. “I’ll be between you and the door. What if someone breaks in?”

“Then they’re just as likely to break in from the fire escape,” she says, sounding entirely too reasonable for Frank’s peace of mind. “Which is outside my bedroom window. And if you’re out here when that happens, you won’t be able to get to me in time.”

Fuck. She has a point.

“And,” she goes on, and he feels his doom closing in on him. “If you’re in there with me, you’ll still be between me and the door.”

He tries desperately to think of a rational, logical reason why he should sleep on the couch. Something. Anything. Somehow, he doesn’t think “I’m stupid in love with you and don’t want to admit it,” will be accepted as a valid argument against napping together. It doesn’t even sound like a valid argument in his head.

Karen senses his hesitation and moves in for the kill.

“I’d rather not be alone,” she says quietly. She isn’t meeting his eyes, and all at once he remembers that she shot people today. She received a hostage message and was chased through a building by gangsters and definitely killed at least one person. Karen is the kind of person who will do what she has to — but that doesn’t make it easy.

He gets up wordlessly and follows her into the bedroom. She crawls into bed first, taking the side that’s up against the wall, letting him have the spot that puts him in between her and the world. He lays down on his back next to her, the double bed not leaving nearly as much space between them as he expected. She’s lying on her side facing him, already blinking sleepily, and he reaches over and takes her hand in his.

“Hey,” he says. She opens her eyes slowly and he rolls onto his side to face her properly. “I’m sorry you had to kill someone for me.”

Karen looks at him, and her gaze is direct and unflinching when she says, “I’m not.”

“Karen—“

“This isn’t the first time I’ve shot someone, Frank.” She shifts, her eyes drifting closed, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining that she ends up a little closer. “It’s not even the first time I’ve shot someone to protect someone I love.”

His heart thuds to a painful halt in his chest. “What?”

“Mmm,” she hums, shifting again. “This makes — oh, half a dozen.”

“Not that,” he says. His voice sounds strange to his own ears. “I know you’ve shot people before.” Though now he knows that before today, that number was only two. He wonders if she’ll tell him about it someday.

Karen frowns, opening her eyes again with an apparent effort. “How do you know that?”

“You’ve held me at gunpoint before, remember?”

She snorts, eyes closing again. He’s going to lose her to sleep at any moment.

“I didn’t shoot you, though,” she mumbles.

“It was a near thing, the way I remember it.” He moves a little closer to her. “But that’s not the part of the sentence I was asking about.”

“I know,” she says, opening her eyes again to meet his gaze. He stares back, unable to force his lips to form the question he’s been trying to ask without asking. Karen knows though. “I do,” she says, open and honest and it’s the most terrifying thing she’s ever said to him, including the time she asked him to hold a gun to her head.

Frank swallows hard, licks his lips. He wants to look away, some long-buried survival instinct urging him to hide, but he doesn’t give in to it. He doesn’t think he can speak, so instead he slides forward, slowly so she has time to stop him if she wants to, and presses his lips to Karen’s.

She meets him halfway. His nose brushes hers and then their lips meet in a kiss that’s soft and slow and achingly tender. Karen smiles as their lips part, and his tongue flicks out, swiping along his lower lip, wanting to savor the taste of her.

“That better not’ve been a one-time thing,” she murmurs, and he grins.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he says, pulling her into his arms. She snuggles into him, pressing a kiss to his neck, and they’re both asleep moments later.

Frank wakes to the quiet but insistent buzzing of a phone set to vibrate. He frowns, still half asleep.

“Make it stop,” Karen whines, burrowing deeper into the warm cocoon of blankets and Frank. He half rolls onto his back, one arm reaching blindly behind him for the nightstand. It takes a couple tries, but he finds the phone and manages to tap the little green answer icon on the screen. He puts the phone to his ear and snuggles closer to Karen, tucking her head under his chin.

“What,” he grumbles in lieu of a greeting.

“Frank! Oh, thank god.”

Frank pulls the phone away from his face and squints at the screen. Unknown caller. He’d swear thats David’s voice, but why would David be calling Karen’s phone? He puts the phone back to his ear.

“David?”

“Yeah, it’s me, buddy.”

“What’s going on?” He shifts so he’s lying on his back, one arm still holding Karen close. She grumbles at the movement.

“Who is it?” She mumbles.

“Lieberman,” he whispers back, pulling the mouthpiece away from his face but keeping the phone to his ear. His answer wakes her up a bit, and she pulls away enough to blink at him drowsily.

“Is that Karen?” David asks.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “We’ve had the craziest day, you wouldn’t believe—“

“Yeah, about that...” David clears his throat and laughs awkwardly. “We need to talk, Frank. Can you come over?”

“I’m kind of in the middle of some things, David.” Frank sits up, looking at Karen. She’s watching him with a small frown on her face.

“It’s really important, Frank. Like, _really_ important. Please?”

“What’s going on, Lieberman?” He and David keep in fairly regular contact but it’s definitely unusual for the spook to ask him over with no advance warning. Especially on the same day Frank is dealing with his own abduction and the Russian mob.

“Uh, I can’t really talk about it over an unsecured line...”

Frank suppresses a groan. He hates when David gets cagey on him.

“Fine,” he says, trying not to sound too annoyed. “When and where?”

“Just come by the house? And, uh, the sooner the better.” Frank glances at the clock — it’s already after five. “And bring Karen with you.”

“What? Why—“

“It’s important, just do it, I’ll see you soon!” The line goes dead.

“What was that about?” Karen asks. She’s sitting up now, legs folded under her while she rubs the sleep out of her eyes. She has creases pressed into her cheek from sleep and her hair is a mess. He’s about to answer her question when the phone starts buzzing again in his hand.

“What now?” He answers it without glancing at the screen, assuming David forgot to mention something.

“Uhhh...” a man’s voice, vaguely familiar. “Who is this? Where’s Karen?” He looks at the screen: Foggy.

Oops.

“Uh, it’s for you,” Frank says, handing the phone to Karen. “Sorry.” She takes it, laughter in her eyes as she answers.

“Hey, Foggy.”

He presses a kiss to Karen’s temple and gets out of bed, listening with half an ear to her conversation.

“No one you want to know about.”

He needs to figure out some actual clothes, he can’t actually leave the building dressed in Karen’s clothes. He thinks about it for a minute, considering his options.

“What’s up?”

The smart thing would have been to wash the clothes he’d been abducted in before going to sleep, but he didn’t actually think of that then and there’s no time to do it now. He does have another option, more expedient but also, unfortunately, more likely to piss Karen off.

“Oh, you know, just another day in the Page household.”

After a few more moment’s deliberation, he decides there’s nothing for it and shoves his feet into his boots.

“Hey,” he says, turning to Karen, who keeps the phone to her ear but pulls the mouthpiece away from her face a little, eyebrows raised in silent question. “I need to run out for a minute, I’ll be back in five, okay?”

“Okay, um— if you take too long I’m going to come after you,” she warns. “My gun is still loaded.”

He grins at her, leaning in to place a lingering kiss on her mouth. She leans into the kiss, biting her lip and holding his gaze when he pulls away. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he murmurs.

“Who _is_ that?” He hears Nelson demand over the phone, voice tinny over the speaker. Karen gives him a look and he chuckles as he heads out of the bedroom. He nearly trips over his own feet when he hears her reply.

“My boyfriend.” He glances back at her from the doorway in surprise, and the look she gives him is wicked and slightly challenging. He almost goes back to kiss her again, unable to keep a smile from spreading across his face, but he can hear Nelson’s yelp of surprise even from across the room, so he only holds her gaze for a long moment before leaving her to it.

He leaves the apartment and heads for the stairs, but instead of going down, he heads up. He has a go bag hidden on the roof of the building, filled with cash, extra clothes, and weapons. Just in case. He never told Karen about it. He knows she’ll understand why it’s there, but she’s not going to be pleased he kept this from her.

Out on the roof, he glances at the sun and the surrounding buildings to get his bearings and heads for the northwest corner. He’s only taken a few steps when he hears two guns cocking, at the same time as a thickly-accented voice says, “We meet at last, Mr. Castle.”

He turns around slowly, not wanting to spook them into pulling the trigger. The two men facing him are enormous. One looks like the clone of Ivan Drago, complete with ice-blonde flattop. He’s wearing a bright blue tracksuit that he somehow still manages to look menacing in. His associate is slightly shorter but no less muscled, and his nose is in worse shape even than Frank’s is.

“Who the fuck are you?” Frank demands. His mind is racing — do they know Karen is downstairs? Are there more of them? He eyes their hands, their pistols aimed at him with unwavering accuracy. One of the guns looks odd, with a long barrel that looks wider than usual.

“I am Ilya, and this is my associate, Ilya,” the Drago lookalike says.

“No shit?”

Drago-Ilya heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, yes, we have heard all the jokes, they are not amusing.”

“I don’t know any Russian jokes,” Frank says.

He’s not going to say it.

He’s not—

“Other than the two I’m looking at.”

Drago-Ilya sighs again. “Everyone is comedian. We can move on now, I hope? We would like you to come with us.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“We thought you might say that,” Nose-Ilya speaks for the first time in a deep, guttural voice. “Which is why we came prepared with ultimatum.”

“That’s a terrible way to start a relationship,” Frank observes.

“Only if you want _good_ relationship,” Drago-Ilya says.

“It is a great way to start a relationship if you do not care about the _quality_ of the relationship,” Nose adds conversationally.

“So what do you want, then?” Frank asks.

“We want the kind of relationship where we do not have to go downstairs and hurt your pretty friend to gain your cooperation,” Drago says.

Frank’s trigger finger starts twitching. He eyes their guns, the surroundings — he doesn’t think he can get to them or into cover without getting shot. Worse, with two of them he can’t guarantee he’d stop them both before one got to Karen.

“You better be fucking careful what you say next,” he growls.

“Relax, Mr. Castle,” Nose-Ilya raises his free hand to pat the air in a calming gesture. “We do not wish to involve the reporter.”

“We come with options,” Drago-Ilya says reasonably.

“Options,” Frank repeats.

“Option one,” Drago-Ilya says. “You come with us quietly, no one gets hurt, we all have nice day.”

“Well, _you_ probably won’t have a nice day,” Nose-Ilya muses.

“Right.” Frank isn’t expecting to enjoy his evening at this point. He just needs them to get a move on, because the longer he’s up here the more likely it is that Karen will come looking for him. His fists clench at the thought of what could happen if she does.

“Option two,” Nose-Ilya continues. “You resist, we shoot you full of tranquilizers and carry your limp body out of here.” That explains the weird-looking pistol in his hand.

“We prefer _not_ to have to carry you,” Drago says. “What are you, two hundred pounds of solid muscle? Bad for our backs.”

“Everyone’s a comedian,” Frank mutters.

“Option three,” Drago-Ilya says, getting deadly serious. “You resist, we still tranquilize you, and we also pay Miss Page a visit that she will not enjoy.”

Frank grits his teeth. He doesn’t want to go with them, because for the first time in a long time he has something to look forward to, and he doesn’t want to miss it. But no magical solutions have presented themselves for how he gets out of this without risking Karen. He thinks of her, sitting cross legged on her bed, eyes bright and smiling.

He wonders how long it will take her to track him down. He doesn’t even bother hoping that she won’t come after him. It’s an inevitability, like the sun rising every morning, or that he’d stop resisting her eventually and let her close. This way, he can at least find out exactly who they’re up against.

“Option one,” he says reluctantly. He’d much rather fight them, but this is the fastest way to get them away from Karen. He wishes he could warn her somehow, but disappearing will have to be enough to protect her, for now.

Disappearing, _and_ threatening his abductors. “But if anything happens to Karen, you should know I’ll kill every last asshole in your entire organization, starting with you two. It won’t be quick.”

“Of course, Mr. Castle,” Drago-Ilya says. “Right this way.”

Frank says a silent apology to Karen as he starts down the stairs.

She gives him more than five minutes, something she’ll regret for a long time afterward.

She chats with Foggy for a bit, giving him as many details about her new relationship as possible without saying Frank’s name. _That_ is a detail he deserves to learn in person, preferably with a lot of alcohol involved. Somehow she doesn’t think Foggy will be all that surprised to learn her boyfriend’s identity. After all, he spent just as much time in that courtroom as she did, and she told him the truth about Lewis Wilson, not the version the media ran with that painted Frank as a terrorist.

After about eight minutes have past, though, she can no longer reign in her paranoia.

“Hey, Foggy? I have to go, I’ll call you soon and we’ll meet up for drinks?”

“Sounds good, I want to hear all about this man of yours!”

She disconnects and shoves her phone into her pocket, grabbing her .380 as she climbs out of bed. She tries to convince herself that she’s overreacting, but after everything that’s happened today, she doesn’t think Frank would dawdle. He would know she would worry, he would have known she wasn’t kidding when she said she’d come after him if he took too long. Which means something is wrong.

She stuffs her feet into a pair of shoes, the closest ones to hand that don’t involve laces or buckles — some of her nicer flats, actually, that she wore to work the day before. They look ridiculous with her tshirt and sleep shorts, not that she cares.

In the building’s stairwell she pauses. Up or down? She looks around, hoping for clues, but there’s nothing. She hesitates a moment longer before heading up. There will be less to search up there. If he’s not on the roof...

He could be anywhere.

She proceeds carefully up the stairs, clearing her corners and always keeping her gun pointing in the direction she is looking. When she gets to the top she takes a deep breath before exiting the stairwell.

The roof is empty, the lowering sun turning everything to gold and casting harsh shadows. She paces around, looking for some sign of Frank, but there’s nothing, not so much as a drop of blood. She almost thinks he didn’t come up here at all, but then she spots the corner of an olive drab duffle poking out from beneath a tarp and she knows. She knows that’s what he had to leave to get. Which means someone got to him.

It’s the lack of any obvious signs of a struggle that has her most puzzled. Frank’s not the type to go down easy.

And then it hits her: they must have threatened her. She has to bite back the nausea that claws at her throat. This is exactly why Frank stayed away for so long, only meeting her sporadically to catch up over coffee and prove to her he wasn’t dead.

She runs to the edge of the roof and looks down in both directions, hoping for some sign of him. For a terrifying moment she thinks she’s missed him, that she’ll have nothing at all to go on in her search, but then she sees him. Down at the end of the block, there’s a large black SUV idling by the curb, and two ridiculously large men in garish tracksuits are escorting Frank into it.

She quickly takes aim with her pistol but after a moment’s hesitation she lowers it slowly without firing. She can’t make that shot — it’s too far, and there are too many people she could hit instead, including Frank. She grips the low wall so hard she scrapes her knuckles, trying to gather as much information as possible before they’re gone, knowing that she’ll never catch up to them before they get in and drive away. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and quickly snaps a few pictures, trying to get the license plate and the faces of the two goons.

Frank is about to step into the vehicle when he pauses, looking around like he heard someone call his name, and she almost drops the phone over the edge of the building. Even from this distance, she can see the scowl that he wears so often. She rarely sees him without it, had been hoping to see it less and less as he settled into his new life.

He sees her. Their eyes lock across the intervening space, and she says his name, even though he can’t hear her. He shakes his head. She sees his lips move as he mouths a message, hears the words he says with her heart instead of her ears.

“I love you.”

And then the mobsters are muscling him into the back of the SUV and he’s gone.

Her knees buckle and she covers her mouth with one hand to muffle a sob. She doesn’t know when she started crying, but her cheeks are wet with tears and her throat is tight. She leans into her terror and grief for only a moment before shoving it violently away from her. She doesn’t have time to wallow.

Karen picks herself up and stuffs her phone into one pocket, her pistol into the other. She scrubs away the tears impatiently and goes to the tarp in the corner of the roof. Peeling it back, she’s unsurprised to find Frank’s emergency stash. Stupid, stubborn man. He could have kept it in her apartment if he’d just talked to her about it. There are a couple of gun cases and the duffle she’d spotted earlier, and she gathers them all up and lugs them back down to her apartment, hands shaking.

She dumps everything on her kitchen table and leaves it for a moment to go put on real clothes. She feels a little better once she’s wearing her jeans and a black tshirt, feet jammed into a pair of hiking boots, one of the few things that survived from her life in Vermont. They’re sturdy, well broken-in. Most importantly, they make her feel like she can kick down doors. She ties her hair back in a ponytail and goes back out to her kitchen table.

She hesitates only for a moment before going through Frank’s stuff. She feels a little like a voyeur, but she pushes through it. She might need his gear, so she needs to find out what she has available.

She opens the weapons cases first. One contains the parts to a sniper rifle. She closes that one up. She doesn’t have time to learn how to use it. The second has a shotgun in it. That’s a little more her speed, though she’s hoping it won’t come to the point where she’ll actually need it.

She unzips the duffle to find three more cases — two smaller ones containing a pistol and more ammo and one larger filled with round canisters about the size of a large can of soup. She pries one open and finds a grenade inside. She blinks in surprise, and then rolls her eyes at herself for being surprised. _Of course_ Frank has explosives stashed on her roof. She closes the canister back up, placing it back in the box which she then carefully sets in the center of the table.

Underneath the cases are three combat knives in sheaths on top of stacks of neatly folded clothing: shirts, jeans, underwear, socks. One well-worn black hoodie, slightly faded, the edges of the hood and sleeves fraying. Her hands linger on it, fingers brushing the soft fabric as she pulls it out.

She hesitates only a moment before shrugging into it, leaving it unzipped. This isn’t exactly how she’d thought her first theft of Frank’s clothing would go, but somehow it seems fitting, for them. She’d called him her boyfriend and he’d flashed that crooked smile at her, the one that first made her fall for him without even realizing it. The hoodie smells like him, cheap detergent and the herby, slightly astringent smell of gun oil and Frank. She hurriedly rifles through the rest of the duffle, refusing to dwell.

She finds a stash of cash and fake IDs near the bottom, both for him and for her, and she feels a flash of frustrated anger. He’s been harboring feelings for her for a long time to be this prepared, and she’s furious at all the time they’ve lost. The anger leaves as quickly as it came, though. She of all people knows why Frank has held her at arms’ length for so long, why it took a life-or-death situation for him to finally admit his feelings to her.

She empties the gun cases and his clothes out of the duffle, leaving them in piles on the table. At the very bottom of the bag, she finds two bulletproof vests, one slightly smaller than the other, and she smiles.

She leaves them both in the bottom of the bag. She fills in over them with the pistol and ammo in their cases, two of the knives, the stack of false IDs, her own stash of ammo and the vest she’d worn that afternoon. She puts one change of clothes back in for Frank, determined that he’ll get the chance to wear it, and gathers up her own spare clothing, just in case. She tucks the third knife into the top of her boot.

Karen pulls out her phone and pulls up her recent calls, selecting an unfamiliar number from the list. It rings several times, and she’s preparing herself to leave a pointed voicemail, when the call connects.

“Uh... Frank?” Says an unfamiliar voice.

“No, it’s Karen,” she says. “Um, Karen Page.”

“Oh,” David Lieberman says. “Oh! I didn’t expect to hear from you...”

“Frank’s been taken, Mr. Lieberman.”

“What— he— it’s just David, please,” he says, sounding worried. “Taken where? What happened?”

She puts him on speakerphone so she can send him the photos she took earlier. “I don’t have much. He went out for a minute, and by the time I went looking for him, it was too late. This is all I have.”

There’s mostly silence on the other end of the line as David looks at the photos she sent. “I don’t recognize either of them,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Did Frank tell you that you two were supposed to come over this evening?”

“No,” she says. “But I got a call pretty much immediately after he hung up with you, and he went out while I was still on the phone. So there wasn’t really time.”

“Well, you better come over anyway,” he says. “I’ll see what I can dig up on our new friends in the meantime.”

“Can you see about a burner for me? I think I need to leave my phone here.”

“That’s smart,” he says. “I’ll have one ready for you when you get here. And I should be able to backdoor into that one so you can still get your calls and messages if you need them.”

He relays his address to her and she writes it down on a scrap of paper before hanging up. She only has a few other things to do before leaving: she looks up directions to the Lieberman’s house, sends Foggy a quick text letting him know she’ll be off the grid for a while ( _please don’t do anything stupid_ he says), waters her roses, and stuffs a few last essentials into Frank’s duffle before slinging it over her shoulder. She hesitates over the other gun cases for a moment, but ultimately decides to leave them. They’re too conspicuous to carry around, and if Frank needs weapons later, she doubts this is his only cache in the city.

Taking one last look around her apartment and trying not to wonder how long it will be before she sees it again, Karen pulls her hood up to hide her hair and face and leaves. She takes a little-used route out through the basement that connects to the building behind hers, so she comes out on the next street over and that much closer to where she parked her car.

She takes a circuitous route out of the city, not wanting to lead any trouble to the Liebermans’ front door. It takes her nearly an hour to get there because of it, but at least she can be reasonably certain they’re safe. The house she pulls up to is pretty, white with a green door and a detached garage. A dark-haired boy is skateboarding in the driveway in the last of the fading daylight, and a girl with long dark hair is sitting on the front steps, ostensibly reading a book, though she appears to be too busy watching traffic to be taking in much of the story.

Leo Lieberman has serious eyes. She zeroed in on Karen’s car as soon as she pulled up, in a way that makes Karen think she’s been expecting her. However, the slightly angry, confused frown on her face makes Karen think it was someone else Leo was actually expecting.

Karen gets out of her car and grabs her duffle. She carefully crosses the street and walks up the front walk toward the house. Leo watches her, any pretense at reading completely abandoned.

“Hi,” Karen says, stopping when she’s still a few steps away from the front porch.

“You’re Frank’s girlfriend,” Leo says. Karen blinks in surprise, since that is a fairly new development — but, since it’s true, she doesn’t question it or try to explain.

“Yes,” she says, holding out her hand for Leo to shake. “I’m Karen Page. You must be Leo.”

Leo sets her book aside and warily stands, taking Karen’s hand in a respectably firm grip.

“Where’s Frank?”

Karen weighs her response for a moment, studying Leo carefully, and settles on telling her the truth. “Some men took him,” she says. “I’m hoping your dad can help me find where they went so I can get him back.”

Leo considers this for a long moment, looking away down the street, blinking fast and biting her lip. Karen knows the look, and she waits for Leo to regain control.

“Thank you for telling me,” Leo finally says. “My parents don’t like to worry us, they like to pretend everything is always fine, but it’s not like I can’t tell when it’s not.”

Karen is familiar with the feeling.

“You should come inside,” Leo adds. “I’ll take you to Dad.”

The Liebermans’ house is pleasantly untidy and cozily furnished. There are family photos everywhere, and schoolbooks on the coffee table next to an open Chromebook and a vase of flowers.

“Dad!” Leo yells from the middle of the living room, making Karen smile. She stops in the entry area, dropping her bag on the floor because it’s heavy, but not moving further into the house yet.

A pretty woman comes out of the kitchen. “He’s in the basement, kiddo, he can’t hear you,” she says to Leo, eyeing Karen with apparent interest. “Why don’t you run down and let him know Karen is here.”

Karen blinks. That’s two Liebermans who have recognized her on sight now. Exactly how much has Frank told these people about her?

“Hi,” she says, recovering admirably, if you ask her. “Sarah, right? I’m sorry to drop in like this.”

Sarah laughs. “You sound like Pete,” she says. “He apologizes for coming even when he’s been invited.”

It takes Karen a moment to remember that she’s supposed to know who Pete is. She’s perfectly aware that Frank has a new identity, that he signs his credit card slips _Pete Castiglione_ now, but she can never quite bring herself to call him that. He’s never been anyone but Frank, to her. Not Pete, not the Punisher — just Frank.

She wonders for a moment, about Sarah using the name Pete when her daughter had said Frank. She almost asks about it, but then she remembers that she doesn’t know Sarah at all, let alone well enough to ask that sort of question.

“Where is he, anyway?” Sarah goes on, glancing around like Frank will materialize out of thin air at any moment.

“Uh—“ Karen chokes a little on her reply. “David didn’t tell you?” She watches as the smile falls from Sarah’s face and a worried frown takes its place, her arms folding around her ribcage as though to hold herself together, and she feels guilty for being the one to instigate this change.

David chooses that moment to appear, Leo trailing closely behind him.

“Karen!” He comes over and shakes her hand and guides her further into the house, talking nonstop. “It’s so good to finally meet you! You’ve met Leo, and Sarah I see, and Zach is outside. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Frank always wants coffee.”

“Good lord, David,” Sarah interrupts. “Breathe.”She waits until he’s taken a deep breath. “What happened to Pete?”

Zach comes in right then. “Something’s happened to Pete?”

David looks at Sarah, then his son, then at his daughter, lurking quietly in Karen’s shadow, and back to Sarah. “Maybe we should go downstairs—“

“Some men took him,” Leo interrupts. “Karen already told me.”

Shit.

Luckily Sarah is too taken aback by the news to be mad that Karen let her kid in on the secret. She turns to David, voice rising. “You knew about this? I thought we talked about not keeping secrets!”

“It just happened!” He says, matching her volume. “I was going to tell you but I was trying to take care of some stuff before Karen got here!”

“You could’ve hollered up the stairs!” Sarah points out, voice rising even more, a frustrated grimace on her face.

“Hey!” Karen interrupts, and they both jump a little and turn to stare at her. “Is this really the best use of our time?”

They share a glance of the distinctly married variety before turning back to her.

“Come on, Curtis is downstairs,” David says, leading the way to the basement door.

“How do you take your coffee?” Sarah calls after them.

“Black,” Karen says just as she heads into the basement.

“Pete never told us she was _hot_ ,” she hears Zack whisper loudly to Leo as David closes the door behind them. He looks mortified, but Karen laughs.

“I can see why Frank likes your family,” she says.

He relaxes into a chuckle, following her down the stairs. “Yeah, pretty sure they’re why he puts up with me.”

The basement is much nicer than she expected. For some reason, she’d assumed she’d find an unfinished room lit only by the glow of computer monitors, wires and crates of tech everywhere. What she finds is a pleasant space done up in creams and greys, a squashy couch in one corner, a table in another with a half-finished puzzle atop it. The other half of the room is closer to her expectations, a long table pushed against the wall covered with computer towers and monitors, wires everywhere, though they’re bundled as neatly as possible considering the sheer number of them.

Curtis Hoyle is sitting on the couch, messing around on his phone. He moves to stand as she comes down the last few steps, but she waves him back.

“Hi, Curt,” she says. They’ve met once before, briefly.

“Hey, Karen,” he says.

“Did David tell you what’s going on?”

He nods. “We’ve been trying to figure out how the Russians tracked Frank down twice in one day.”

Karen frowns. “Twice?”

Curtis cuts a look at David, who laughs nervously. “Yeah...” He starts, cutting off again when they hear the door at the top of the stairs open. It closes again and Sarah appears, juggling four mugs in one hand and a full carafe of coffee in the other. David jumps to help her and they pass out mugs and pour coffee.

“You were saying?” Karen prompts when everyone is properly caffeinated.

“Uh, right— Why don’t you walk us through what happened?” He suggests.

“Or,” Curtis speaks up with a pointed look at David. “David could start, because he has something to tell you.”

Karen looks at Curt in surprise, because it’s rare — in her admittedly limited experience — that she sees the mild-mannered man take charge like that. He gives her a look that says she definitely wants to hear this, whatever it is, so she turns to look at David expectantly. He’s staring at Curtis in horrified betrayal.

“You gotta tell her, man,” Curt insists.

“Tell me what?”

David sighs in defeat, looking at the ceiling as if for strength.

“So... you know those anonymous texts you got this morning, telling you where to find Frank?”

“Yeah,” Karen says slowly, eyes narrowing. “But how do you know about them?”

“I kind of... sent them,” he says, cringing.

“Oh, David, you didn’t,” Sarah says, her instant look of dismay telling Karen that she’s already figured out what David is about to say next.

“I set the whole thing up,” he continues. “I lured Frank out for drinks last night, and I drugged him and stashed him in that basement, and sent you the info you needed to go get him.”

Karen stares at him. “David, what the fuck,” she says. Curtis wears a look of resigned exasperation, and Sarah reaches out and smacks David lightly on the shoulder.

“What were you thinking?” She demands, coffee sloshing dangerously.

“I just wanted him to talk to Karen!” He half yells, turning to look beseechingly at Karen. “I put that song on as subliminal messaging, and sent you there to rescue him, and all I wanted was for him to stop being so damn _noble_ by staying away from you!”

Karen stares at him for a long moment and starts to laugh.

David blinks, turning to Sarah and Curtis, both of whom shrug.

“Uh, Karen?”

“That is — the dumbest plan — I’ve _ever_ heard,” she gasps between chuckles. “But it — fucking — _worked_.”

David stares at her, dumbfounded, and a delighted smile slowly spreads across his face. “It did?”

Karen nods, still chuckling. She rubs a hand over her face, growing serious again. “Frank is definitely going to kill you when he finds out though,” she says matter-of-factly. David nods miserably, the thought clearly having already occurred to him. “Where do the Russians come in?”

“I honestly don’t know, yet,” he says. “I haven’t been able to figure out how they tracked Frank down where I was holding him, or how they found him at your apartment. I’ve been monitoring their cell traffic all day and should have been able to warn you both that they were coming, but there was nothing.”

“Tell us what happened when you found Frank this afternoon,” Curtis prompts. Karen runs them through the day’s events, though she doesn’t go into much detail about certain aspects of it. Some things aren’t meant to be shared. David blanches when she mentions having to shoot several mobsters, and grins when she glosses over the hours between getting back to her apartment and Frank’s abduction.

“What about the photos I sent you?” She asks when she’s caught them up.

“Those were actually really helpful!” David waves her over to his bank of computers and sits down at one of them. “So the two goons,” he says, pulling up the images on one of his screens. “They’re the top enforcers for the Russian organization here in the city. Ilya Konstantinovich and Ilya Fedorov.” He points at the blonde and the brunette respectively.

“They’re both named Ilya?”

“I know, right? Hilarious,” David says. She cuts him a look, and he clamps his mouth shut. Despite her laughter, she’s not quite certain she’s ready to forgive him just yet. She will eventually — he meant well, and Karen’s not the type to hold grudges for long, and she technically has David to thank for her new boyfriend — but she doesn’t mind making him sweat for a while. At least until they’re all out of this mess in one piece.

“How did they find us?” She asks.

“I’m still working on that,” he says. “But I was able to trace the vehicle they’re using. They took him to a warehouse down by the docks.”

“Not very original,” Karen mutters. Curtis chuckles behind her. “All right,” she says to David. “Give me everything you have.”

They put a bag over his head once he’s in the back seat of their vehicle.

He tries to let the cheap, scratchy material distract him from the utter devastation on Karen’s face as he was taken away. It doesn’t work. He tried so hard for so long to stay out of her heart, but she climbed into his years ago and refused to leave. She made a home in the rubble of his soul so quietly that by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late to really do anything about it. This is what he gets for pushing her away for so long. Now they’re out of time.

He doesn’t bother letting his captors know that the bag is so thin as to be useless at blocking his eyesight. Instead, he sits quietly between the two enormous Russians, watching their route through the city and carefully cataloguing information about them. Drago-Ilya has a slight limp, well-concealed, but possibly enough to exploit when the need arises. Nose-Ilya is big, but slow. As long as Frank can keep from getting caught in his grip, he should be able to lay him out pretty quickly.

The driver is a young man, practically a kid, wet behind the ears and clearly nervous. He should see reason, if Frank has the time to talk him down. There’s a fourth man in the front passenger seat, smaller than the Ilyas, older than the driver, more dangerous than any of them. He looks smart, for one thing, calm and collected but not at ease. He’s the one Frank will watch the closest. He’s the one Frank will take out first, if and when it comes to a fight.

They take him to a warehouse by the docks, and Frank has to bite his tongue to keep from making a snarky comment about their lack of originality. It would only let them know he was gathering more information than they want him to have, so he resists the temptation. The SUV pulls in through one of the bay doors on the city side of the warehouse and parks at one end of the big open space inside.

They muscle him out of the back seat, and he makes his move.

He kicks Drago’s knee, hard, and the man goes down with a yowl. Nose tries to grab Frank from behind, but he slams his head into the guy’s face, probably breaking his nose yet again, and it’s enough to loosen his grip. The driver still hasn’t made it out of the car, but the fourth man is already coming at Frank, trying to take advantage of the confusion of the fight. He’s miscalculated Frank’s speed, though, and Frank can see the surprise on his face when Frank rushes to meet him.

If he’d been smart, he would’ve shot Frank the moment he made his move, but they must be under orders to keep him alive. Frank collides with him, getting his shoulder into the man’s chest to knock all the air out of him. He shoves Frank away, but not before Frank has relieved him of his combat knife and knocked his gun out of his hands to go skittering across the concrete floor.

He needs to move fast — he can already hear the Ilyas recovering, struggling to their feet, and the driver is out of the car and coming around the back of the vehicle. Frank always did prefer a knife to a gun, though, and his adversary may be smarter than the other Russians in that car, but he’s still no match for Frank.

They circle each other for a few steps, and Frank presses in, landing two quick jabs of the knife that leave his opponent with one arm hanging limp and useless. He spins around to finish him off, only to be tackled from behind by both Ilyas. After that, it’s a numbers game — and Frank was never that good at math. He’s pinned down, with more Russians coming out of the woodwork every second. Someone twists his wrist until he drops the knife, and someone else picks him up and slams him into a metal chair in the middle of the room. The cut on his forehead has opened up in all the excitement, the bandage coming the rest of the way off when someone yanks the bag off his head, giving him a chance to get a good look at where he is.

It’s one of the larger buildings on the waterfront, still in decent condition; though the windows are dirty, they’re all intact, and while most of the space is empty, there’s a closed-off office at one end and pallets of boxes stacked around the edges. A catwalk circles the space a dozen feet overhead, accessible from the roof of the office and from a few ladders dotting the walls.

Frank is sitting on one of two metal chairs in the center of the room. The one across from him is nice, the kind a corporate bigwig would have for clients, cushioned leather and chrome. Frank’s is more utilitarian, paint and rust flaking off the plain metal seat, and he’s quickly chained to it with the handcuffs already dangling from the arms. It’s bolted to the floor, and he knows it’s just been waiting for him to arrive. Frank can’t help the sigh that slips out once he’s been restrained — he’d been hoping not to be chained to a chair again so soon. Or ever.

Two more goons come through a door in the far corner, both armed with assault rifles. His odds are getting steadily worse — he’s up to a dozen tracksuits that he can see, and he can hear indistinct voices and footsteps coming from the other end of the warehouse at his back, where the office is. He’s fought his way out of worse situations, it’s true, but this isn’t looking great, especially considering his first attempt went so swimmingly.

And then it gets infinitely worse.

“Mr. Castle, we meet again.”

He knows that voice.

“I confess, I didn’t actually believe you’d come so quietly — that little scene you just caused notwithstanding,” the speaker continues, voice getting a little louder as he comes closer. “But I’ve always said, it really is about finding the proper motivation, if you want someone to do something.”

“Fisk.” Frank snarls the name. “How’d you get out of prison?”

Wilson Fisk finally steps into Frank’s field of vision, moving to stand next to the nice chair and look down his nose at Frank. He’d almost forgotten the size of the man’s ego. Fisk is wearing an impeccably tailored three piece suit, dark grey with a black tie, shoes so shiny Frank’s old drill instructor would’ve approved.

“I bought the prison,” Fisk says, shrugging nonchalantly. Frank’s trigger finger twitches. He’s dying to wipe the smug smile off the bastard’s face. “Oh, I still stop in occasionally, for appearances, of course. But lately, well, it’s so dreary on the inside, and there is so very little to entertain oneself with, don’t you agree, Mr. Castle? I find myself spending less and less time there.”

Frank would roll his eyes if this situation wasn’t so serious. He did not miss Fisk’s penchant for monologuing. When he doesn’t immediately respond, the crime boss keeps talking.

“Well, perhaps _you_ were never bored in prison,” he muses. “All those criminals to kill, and you left so soon, after all.”

“You wanna cut the bullshit and get to the goddamn point?” Frank snaps. There’s a flash of fury in Fisk’s eyes, quickly controlled. He doesn’t like being interrupted, doesn’t like people who won’t play into his performances.

Frank doesn’t have any patience for it.

“I confess, Mr. Castle, I am disappointed in your choice of attire for the evening’s festivities,” Fisk says, ignoring Frank’s outburst to look critically at his pink sweatpants.

“You should’ve sent an invitation,” Frank says. “If I’d known you were throwing me a party, I’d have worn my favorite vest.”

“Oh, I am throwing a party,” Fisk says, finally sitting in the chair facing Frank with a sneer. “But you’re not the guest of honor.”

Frank’s blood turns to ice.

“Karen Page is,” Fisk says. His smile is a feral grimace of hatred.

“You leave her alone, Fisk, you don’t fucking touch her,” Frank growls. “You got me, you don’t need Karen.”

“You really are incredibly short sighted, Mr. Castle,” Fisk chuckles. “You’re more of a bonus. Why kill one bird when you can kill two with the same stone?”

“I’ll fucking kill you, Fisk,” Frank yells, struggling against his bonds. “I warned you, last time, you won’t walk away from this.”

Fisk stands, straightening his clothing fastidiously, looking unconcerned by Frank’s rage.

“I’ll see you again soon,” he says, calm and superior as ever as he walks away. “Show Mr. Castle our hospitality, won’t you, Ilya?”

“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Fisk,” Nose replies, cracking his knuckles while Frank continues shouting threats at Fisk’s retreating footsteps.

“Uh, Karen? Your phone is ringing,” David says, frowning at something on his monitor. “Blocked number. You expecting a call?”

Karen frowns. They’ve been studying up on Russian criminal activities over the past few months, trying to gather as much intel as they can before they go get Frank tonight. She’s been pacing the width of the room behind David, chewing on her thumbnail. Sarah retreated upstairs not long after getting the full story, saying that she needed to make dinner. Karen had recognized that what the other woman really needed was some normality, some distance from the kind of mess that Karen feels at home in. Curtis has been paying attention from his spot on the couch.

“Not really,” she says. “But it could be a source. Can you put it through?”

David nods, typing a few commands. He gives her a thumbs up to let her know when the call has connected.

“Karen Page,” she says.

There’s a pause on the other end.

“Hello, Miss Page.”

Karen stops breathing.

“It’s been a long time,” Wilson Fisk continues. Her knees feel weak, and she grabs for the back of a chair for support.

“I didn’t think you had phone privileges,” she says, impressed by how cool her voice sounds. She looks at David, but he’s already running a tracking program on the call.

“I don’t, when I’m in prison,” Fisk says, as casually as if they were discussing the weather. ”I was just telling an old friend how little time I spend there, lately.”

Karen’s heart lurches. Frank.

“I wasn’t aware you had friends,” she says, allowing her hands to shake so she can focus on keeping her voice steady. Fisk chuckles, the sound grating across her nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Miss Page.”

“What do you want, Fisk?”

There’s a pause. She can hear voices in the background, but nothing that sounds like Frank.

“I want a trade,” Fisk finally says. “You come to the location I’m about to give you, and I’ll let Mr. Castle go free.”

Karen’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t believe him. “Where?” David gives her a look, but she shakes her head at him. She mouths the word _trace?_ at him, and he mouths _close_ back.

She can’t see Fisk’s face, but she can imagine the smug smile on it at her question, and she barely restrains her snarl. He gives her an address, and she frowns in surprise, because it isn’t at the docks. David is already pulling it up on a map and pulling information about it off the internet: it’s an art gallery, owned by a woman named Vanessa Marianna. Fisk’s fiancée. Karen is surprised he’s willing to use his fiancée’s place of business for an openly nefarious purpose.

“Come alone,” Fisk is saying. “And unarmed. I know all about your penchant for firearms, Miss Page. If my men find so much as a cap gun on you, Mr. Castle’s life is forfeit.”

“Understood,” Karen grinds out. “I want proof of life.”

There’s the sound of a door opening, and Karen can suddenly hear shouting in the background. She’d recognize Frank’s guttural roar anywhere even if she can’t make out the words, and she lowers herself into a chair before her knees give out. Frank isn’t the only thing she can hear. There are thuds and grunts and the slap of flesh hitting flesh. She squeezes her eyes shut as she realizes they’re beating him.

“Let him go, Fisk,” she says, her voice deadly soft.

“Now, now, Miss Page,” Fisk says, clearly enjoying himself. The door closes and Frank’s shouting is cut off, and she flinches. “He’ll be released as soon as you’re in my custody, and not a moment before.”

“When?”

“Oh, let’s not rush into anything,” Fisk says. “Nine a.m. tomorrow. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to be late.” The line goes dead and Karen has to restrain the urge to kick something.

“You cannot go to that meeting, Karen,” David says. “That is one hundred percent a trap, he’s never going to let Frank go.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She snaps at him. “Of course it’s a trap, of course he’s using Frank to lure me in, but it doesn’t matter. Frank would do it for me, and I’m going to do it for him, and you can’t stop me.”

David runs his hands through his hair in frustration and looks at Curtis. “Can’t you talk some sense into her, man?”

Karen rolls her eyes, but Curtis just looks at her for a moment.

“No,” he says thoughtfully. “I want to know what she’s planning.”

Karen, already drawing breath to defend herself, lets it out in a surprised _oh_. Curtis notices and smiles at her.

“You’ve got your head on straight, I can tell that much,” he says. “I’m at least going to listen to what you have to say before I try to talk you out of it.”

Karen laughs, though it’s strained. “Thank you,” she says. “Look, I know this a trap. What I really want to know is _why_ it’s a trap.”

David looks confused. “Why? Because Fisk wants you both dead, that’s why.”

Karen is already shaking her head. “They took Frank from my apartment building.”

“So?”

“So,” she says, drawing the word out. “I was three floors down, wearing my pajamas. Why not just grab us both if he wanted me, too? Why not just shoot us both right there, for that matter? Why this elaborate scheme?”

“Huh,” David says. He thinks about it for a minute. “Well, it did make it easier for them to take Frank. He didn’t put up a fight, presumably because they threatened you.”

“If Fisk really wanted us both, Frank potentially fighting back wouldn’t stop him. He’d have just sent more men.”

“You know something we don’t,” Curtis says.

“Yep,” Karen agrees.

“Are you going to share?” David asks when she doesn’t go on, and Karen hesitates.

She doesn’t know these men, not really. She just met David today, and has known Curtis only slightly longer. But Frank trusts them both, and looking into their eyes, she decides she agrees with him. She nods, taking a deep breath.

“I know Daredevil’s identity,” she says. “I think Fisk is expecting me to ask Daredevil for help rescuing Frank. That’s who he’s really after.”

David blinks at her, mouth hanging open. Curtis narrows his eyes at her.

“Just how many vigilantes do you know?” He asks. Karen smiles uncomfortably.

“More than two,” she says.

“Who else?” David asks. Curtis gives him a look. “Right. So who is he, then? Daredevil.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” Karen shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Fisk can’t get what he wants, because Daredevil is dead.” Her heart twists at the memory of how things ended with Matt. They put an empty coffin in the ground. It took months for things with Foggy to not feel so tragic. For them to be able to laugh together.

The two men make identical expressions of shock. Fuck, she doesn’t have time to go over her entire tumultuous history in this city with them.

“Look, none of that matters right now,” she says. “I’m not going to make it to that meeting tomorrow because I’m going to go get Frank tonight.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” David says. “Frank will kill me if I don’t at least make a token attempt to talk you out of this.”

“Noted.”

“Now that that’s out of the way,” he says. “What’s the plan?”

“First, I’m going to call Foggy and tell him to get out of town for a few days,” she says. “Then I’ll tell you.”

Foggy is not happy when she calls to tell him that he needs to get out of town as soon as possible and take Marci with him.

“Karen, _what_ is going on?” He demands. “Whatever it is, I know it’s big.”

“Fisk is out of prison,” she says, not bothering to try and sugarcoat it.

“What— _how?_ ”

“Not legally, that’s for sure,” she says. “He didn’t mention how he gained his freedom, but he implied he can come and go from the prison as he pleases.”

“I have so much research to do,” Foggy mutters, and she chokes back a laugh.

“No, Foggy, you have to go,” she says. “Please, just take Marci and go to Miami for the week.”

“Only if you come with us,” he says, caving to the desperation in her voice.

“I can’t,” she says, hesitating. She sighs — she has to tell him. “Fisk has Frank.” She tries not to cringe at the utter silence on the other end of the line. Foggy’s smart enough to put two and two together and come up with—

“FRANK CASTLE IS YOUR BOYFRIEND?”

She winces at the volume and pulls the phone away from her ear a bit.

“Yes,” she says simply. “Look, I’m sorry to tell you like this. I wanted to take you to Josie’s and at least get you tipsy before we got into it; I wanted to tell you to your face, but Fisk has kinda forced my hand, here.”

Foggy sighs, and she can imagine him scrubbing a hand over his face, sitting behind his desk in his swanky office at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz. He laughs, the sound a little strained but still genuine.

“Look, I’m not gonna pretend this is the best news I’ve ever heard, but I know how you two look out for each other,” he says. “You’ve always had a connection. So I’m also not going to act like your disapproving older brother about it.” Matt’s specter hangs over them both for a long moment before Karen can clear her throat enough to speak.

“Thanks, Foggy,” she whispers.

“And hey,” he says in his making-the-best-of-things voice. “Now we _both_ have terrifying significant others!”

It makes her laugh, just like she knows he meant it to.

“I love you, Foggy,” she says.

“Love you, too, Kare,” he says, promising to call when he and Marci are somewhere safe.

Matthew Murdock has been dead for months.

Except he never actually died. He’s been in hiding, recuperating with Elektra from having a building dropped on their heads.

If he’s honest, he kind of likes being dead. It is the most peaceful his life has ever been. The crypt beneath Father Lantom’s old church is chilly, but it’s also quiet and secluded. Elektra complains that it’s also dark, but of course that doesn’t bother Matt. The first few months after the collapse of Midland Circle were a blur of pain and exhaustion that Matt would just as soon forget completely. He’d never been so truly blind before, and he’d really like to never repeat the experience.

His hearing and other senses had slowly improved until now they were almost completely back to normal, and Elektra had fully recovered, too. They were together, truly together, for what feels like the beginning of a long, long time.

“Matthew,” she says now, coming down the stairs. “I heard a rumor that you’re not going to like.”

“How’d you hear a rumor from all the way down here?” He asks.

“I was talking to Father Lantom,” she explains. He can tell by the sudden slight breeze that she gestured over her shoulder. “He said he got a call from your friend Foggy.”

Matt cocks his head, wondering how he’d missed that. But then, he hasn’t really felt the need to spy on his neighbors upstairs. With the exception of a few short expeditions to check on his friends — Karen and Foggy seemed to be doing just fine without him — he’s felt strangely detached from the outside world these last months, unconcerned with events in the city overhead for the first time in his life. The sudden sick feeling in his stomach at Elektra’s words told him that was all about to come to a crashing halt.

“Your old friend gave the good Father a warning,” Elektra continues. He can hear the slight hesitation in her voice, the way she’s deliberately keeping her breathing even to try and keep him from panicking. He appreciates the effort, but it’s a wasted one — nothing could prepare him for the next words out of her mouth.

“He said Fisk is out of prison and targeting your friend Karen.”

From the outside, the warehouse appears deserted. One might, at first glance, mistake it for an abandoned and derelict building, a common sight on the banks of the Hudson, especially in Hell’s Kitchen — which has always surprised Karen. Manhattan isn’t exactly known for having space to spare.

On closer inspection, however, the warehouse shows signs of current use. The windows, though dirty, are all intact, unusual even for the buildings in this area that were being used for legal purposes. The bay doors at the far end had gone up and down twice in the last twenty minutes. Not to mention the dozen-plus men in a variety of eye-bleedingly bright tracksuits who had come in or out of the main door since Karen started watching the place. She has a vantage point in the deep shadows at the mouth of an alley across the street that gives her a good view of the front of the building and part of the north side, which is where she’ll find the office, if David’s research is to be trusted.

“David, what do you have for me?” She asks quietly, hoping the earpiece he’d given her really is as sensitive as he’d said.

“They have a decent firewall, I’ll give them that.” His voice comes through loud and clear. “But it was no match for me.” She smiles at his easy confidence.

“Bad news is, I can only see inside the office,” he continues. “They don’t have any working cameras in the main space, or if they do they’re on a different circuit that I haven’t found yet.” He sounds skeptical of that being the case, but Karen finds it odd that there wouldn’t be any cameras in the largest part of the warehouse. She’d expect anyone storing things there to want to know if someone is trying to steal anything.

“Anything interesting?” She prompts when he doesn’t say anything else.

“Not really... a couple of goons,” he says. “No sign of Fisk.”

Karen muffles a sigh. She’s not going to lie to herself: if she runs into Fisk, she’s going to put a bullet between his eyes and sleep like a baby afterward. But Frank is her priority right now. She can chase down Fisk later — though she’ll probably have to arm wrestle Frank for it.

“Can you see Frank?”

“No,” David says a long moment later. “He must be in the main room.”

A shiver of unease slides through Karen’s stomach. She doesn’t like this. Something feels... off. She can’t put her finger on what, but she has a bad feeling.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Curtis mutters over the comms, echoing her thoughts. He’s waiting in a small speedboat, just big enough for him, Karen, and Frank to escape in once Karen locates Frank. They’d figured using the river for their escape route is the fastest way out, since the warehouse is one that sits right over the edge of the water. Worst case scenario, she and Frank could jump out a window, though it makes Karen shudder to think of taking a swim in the filthy waters of the Hudson.

“My thoughts exactly,” she mutters. “But there’s nothing for it. I’m going to see if I can climb up on the roof and get a look in the main room.”

“No, wait—“ David starts, but she’s already slipping silently across the street and into the narrow alley between the warehouse and it’s neighbor that leads to the water. The shadows are even deeper here, and she has to take a moment to let her eyes adjust, but she finds a ladder about a third of the way down.

She’s about fifteen feet up when she hears voices and footsteps coming around from the street, and she freezes. Two goons, one in white, the other in fluorescent yellow — blinding, even in the dark — shine their flashlights into the mouth of the alley she’d just left. She holds her breath as they turn to look down the one she’s currently in, but they don’t look up. The alley below her is deserted, and one of them cracks a joke in Russian and elbows the other as they move on.

“Shit,” she mutters. “That was close.”

“I was going to say I could send a drone,” David grumbles. “But I guess it’s a good thing you moved when you did.” Karen breathes a laugh and starts climbing again.

At the top, she climbs carefully out onto the slightly tilted roof, keeping her center of gravity as low as possible and reminding herself not to look down. There’s a large skylight in the center of the roof, and she makes her way toward it as quietly as possible. It makes her wonder how Frank is always so silent when he moves, because he’s got fifty pounds of muscle on her but she’s struggling not to clomp her way across this roof and bring half the Russian mafia down on her head.

She still can’t figure out how Fisk and the Russians tie in together. Are the Russians simply hired muscle, or has Fisk somehow taken over their organization? The latter seems more his style, but she can’t imagine the Russians allowing an outsider in command.

After what feels like an eternity of scrambling over slick corrugated metal, she finally reaches the edge of the skylight and peers into the warehouse. What she sees is... not good.

“Fuck!”

“Karen?” She hears David and Curtis in harmony, voices filled with concern at her outburst.

“Frank isn’t here,” she growls over the comms. “And this place is _crawling_ with mobsters.”

“What?” David half-yelps, sounding so much like Foggy that she actually jumps a little.

“I’m telling you, he’s not here,” she says. “Fisk. He must have guessed I wouldn’t want to play his little game, so he’s moved Frank to force me into it.”

“Do you see him anywhere?” Curtis asks, and she takes another look through the skylight.

“No,” she says before she’s taken a good look, because she’s sure Fisk isn’t on site, either, but then she freezes. “Shit.”

“Karen?” David asks.

Fifty or more Russians in tracksuits are staring up at the skylight, eyes trained on Karen’s face. Many of them already have weapons drawn, and the rest pull sidearms and uzis out of holsters and pockets, all aiming directly at her.

“Start the boat!” She shrieks at Curtis, already rising out of her crouch. She scrambles up the slight slope of the roof as the first shots ring out, hands alternately held out for balance and scrabbling for purchase on the slick metal. When she reaches the apex, she has so much momentum built up that she catapults over to the other side of the roof, landing face first and tumbling head over heels for several feet. By the time she’s figured out up from down she’s slid halfway down the roof and built up enough speed that she wouldn’t be able to stop even if she wanted to. She feels a burning sensation across one bicep that she doesn’t have time to inspect because before she can brace herself, she’s sailing out into space.

She just barely remembers to take a deep breath before she crashes into the water.

Frank is getting real goddamn sick of basements.

Between the months spent in the bunker with David, the hours in the Billy Joel Advice and Psychological Torture Room, and now this endless night in a cell in Fisk’s boringly modern underground lair, he thinks he’s had enough of basements to last him a lifetime. Which is looking like an increasingly short timespan the longer this goes on.

After his little chat with Fisk, the Ilyas had given Frank a good working-over, so that right now almost every inch of his body hurts. Frank doesn’t really mind — pain meant you were still alive. Besides, he’s been beaten before, so he’s used to it, and the pain is good fuel for his rage. He’s hoping he’ll get to let that rage loose on Fisk before this is all over.

He paces the small space for a while, but eventually exhaustion takes over and he collapses on the rickety bunk. How fucking creepy is it that Fisk has his own jail cells? They’d put the bag back over Frank’s head when they brought him in, but that hadn’t stopped him from making a mental map of the underground maze of rooms and corridors he’d been lead down before finally being shoved unceremoniously into this cell. He’s reasonably certain he could find his way out again, but he needs to stage a jailbreak first, and there isn’t much to work with. The bed is bolted to the floor, and the only other thing in the room is the toilet. It’s dark, the single bare bulb at the end of the hall outside his cell barely filtering through the bars on the door’s small window.

Frank closes his eyes with a sigh, rubbing a hand across his face and wincing when he presses his bruises. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep — he didn’t think he’d be able to, under the circumstances — but the next thing he knows, the lights are on and the door is rattling in its frame.

He comes to with a jolt, sitting up and eyeing the three men crowded in the narrow hallway outside his cell door. They’re dressed normally — read: not in tracksuits — and he doesn’t recognize any of them. He wonders briefly where the Ilyas are.

“Come on, Castle, it’s time to go meet your—“

The lights go out.

“Christ’s sake,” the same man mutters. “You’d think the boss could afford to keep the lights on.”

“Probably spending too much on keeping those damn Russians around,” another voice grumbles. That answers one question.

There’s a metallic sound, like a weapon being drawn, and Frank is on his feet in an instant, trying to see what’s going on, but the room is shrouded in a Stygian darkness. He holds very still, listening.

“Who’s there?” One of the guards says. He’s answered with a series of surprised grunts, followed by three thuds. There’s a click as the door unlatches, then a faint creak as it swings open.

“Frank?”

It’s a woman’s voice, lightly accented and unfamiliar.

“Who the fuck are you?” He says, though he follows her lead and keeps his voice low.

“My name is Elektra,” she says. “Matthew is doing a bit of reconnaissance, but he’ll meet us at our exit.”

Matthew. Frank only knows one goddamn Matthew, and if he’s alive then he’s getting punched in the fucking nose.

“What do you want?” He asks, and she laughs.

“This is a jailbreak,” she says. “Come along now, Mr. McQueen.” He can’t help the snort of muffled laughter at her joke. He follows her quiet footsteps, trying to figure out why the name _Elektra_ seems so familiar. He’s certain they’ve never met before; he thinks he’d recognize her voice.

They move quickly through a couple halls, these better lit than the cell block. His liberator is a pretty little slip of a thing, but something about the way she moves and the fact that half her face is covered tells him she’s plenty capable of taking on anyone they run into. The two wicked-looking sai in her hands gleam in the light, and that’s what finally triggers his memory.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he says, and her steps falter — just barely, but he’s watching for it, so he notices.

“I hope that’s not disappointment I hear in your voice,” she says, still leading him through the maze of corridors.

“Nah,” he says. “I’m gonna beat the shit out of Murdock, though.”

Elektra Natchios laughs, glancing at him over her shoulder. “He’s probably expecting that.”

“Are you two...?”

“Lovers?” She turns again, this time winking at him, and Frank decides he likes her.

An alarm starts blaring, red lights flashing in sync with the jarring noise. Elektra sighs like this is a minor inconvenience and takes off at a jog, gesturing impatiently for Frank to keep up.

A guard rounds a corner ahead of them, and before he can so much as blink in surprise at them Elektra has thrown one of her sai. It sinks deep into the man’s throat, cutting off any shout of warning he might give, and he dies with a gurgle.

“Nice throw,” Frank says, impressed, not to mention a bit shocked that _Red’s girlfriend_ just killed a guy without batting an eyelash. Kind of makes him want to punch the guy even more — after all the bullshit he pulled stopping Frank killing Irish gangsters, the least he could do is not fall for an assassin.

He shrugs it off, following Elektra past the dead guard. She yanks her weapon out of his corpse as they go by, and Frank takes a moment to relieve the dead guy of his sidearm. He feels significantly better with the weight of the pistol in his hand, finally back on familiar ground. And not a moment too soon, because when they round the next corner, all hell breaks loose.

They run right into the middle of a group of five Russians, all bigger than Frank and armed to the teeth. Everyone freezes for half a second, and Elektra recovers first. Before anyone can blink, she’s launched herself at the nearest man, stabbing him several times in quick succession. By the time he falls to his knees, bleeding out from multiple puncture wounds, the rest of them have caught up to her level.

Frank shoots the next closest man to Elektra before he can aim at her, planting two shots in his chest and one in his head. The man closest to Frank uses that as an opportunity to rush him. He’s wearing a truly heinous bubblegum pink tracksuit — seriously, who dresses these guys? — and wielding a combat knife. Not a Ka-Bar, but Frank can work with it. He dodges the first slash, catching the back of Bubblegum’s hand in a block that holds the blade out of the way as Frank fires a round into his gut. He strips the knife out of his hand, hanging on to it for his own use, and double taps as the gangster stumbles to the floor.

Elektra rips out the throat of the fourth man, splattering blood everywhere, and the last of them tries to make a break for it. He’s only gone a few paces when Frank throws his new knife. It thuds into the retreating guard’s back, and he falls, skidding to a halt halfway down the hall.

They don’t have time to appreciate each other’s handiwork, though, because there’s a shout behind them as at least a dozen men flood the hall from two different doorways.

“Time to go,” Elektra says calmly, taking off at a run in the opposite direction. Frank follows her, firing wildly over his shoulder for some cover until they disappear around a corner. Two turns later Elektra stops in front of a ladder.

“Up you go,” she says, gesturing for him to go first.

“Where’s Murdock?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure he’ll join us when he’s good and ready.” She gives Frank a little shove toward the ladder, and he reluctantly starts climbing. Red might be a pain in the ass, but Frank is loathe to leave him to his own devices in Fisk’s territory. Luckily, he doesn’t have to worry long.

The ladder goes up about thirty feet to a trap door, and Frank is half way up when he hears Elektra’s muttered “ _finally_.” He looks down to see Red running up to her, dressed head to toe in black and wearing a blindfold that covers half his face. Frank rolls his eyes but keeps climbing, no longer struggling under the weight of his own conscience. The ladder shakes under his hands and feet as Elektra starts up it just as Frank reaches the door. He heaves it open and climbs through into a dimly lit store room.

When Murdock and Elektra are both through the door, Frank slams it shut and Elektra helps him move a couple of heavy boxes on top of it.

“Castle—“ Murdock starts, and Frank cold cocks him.

“Jesus, Red, you are such an asshole,” he growls, shaking out his hand. “You been alive this whole time?”

Red puts a hand to his now-bleeding nose, waving Elektra off. “No, he’s right, I deserved that,” he tells her, turning to Frank. “Yeah, we’ve both been alive this whole time. It took us a while to recover, and then...” He shrugs. “We just stayed dead.”

“Your friends _buried_ you,” Frank snarls, thinking of Karen’s face when she’d told him about Red’s funeral. Murdock winces.

“If I had time, I’d kick your ass,” Frank says, “but we gotta go stop Karen from doing something reckless.”

“Wait, Karen’s going to do something reckless?”

Frank rolls his eyes. “When is Karen _not_ about to do something reckless?”

“Huh,” Red says. “Good point.”

“I don’t suppose either of you have a phone?”

Red and Elektra both shake their heads.

“Well, fuck,” Frank says. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“We’re... I don’t actually know,” Red says. “This isn’t where we came in.” Frank looks at Elektra for input, but she just shrugs.

“Great,” Frank mutters, leading the way out of the room. They’re in another basement, though the small window high up in the wall tells him they’re at least only one level below the surface this time. He locates the stairs and heads up, taking them two at a time. Out on the street, he gets his bearings quickly. They’re still in the Kitchen, near Central Park, and the sun has fully risen on a warm new day.

“Huh,” Frank says, realizing where he is. “This way.” He leads the way to a nearby building — as luck would have it, they’ve come out of Fisk’s subterranean lair near one of Frank’s emergency stashes. He climbs the fire escape to the building, Red and Elektra trailing along behind him, and pulls back a tarp in the southwest corner.

“I knew I liked you,” Elektra says when she sees the small pile of armaments and supplies hidden beneath the tarp. Murdock just sighs.

“Hey,” Frank snaps defensively. “I’ll have you know that I’m retired.” He pauses, glancing at the pile in front of him. Shrugs. “Mostly.”

“It’s not my business,” Red says, tone full of disapproval.

“Damn straight.” Frank goes straight for the duffle full of clothes and changes quickly, glad to be wearing his own clothing again. He makes a mental note to see if he can get the bloodstains out of Karen’s clothes, or at least buy her some replacements. He straps into a bulletproof vest and shoves several guns and a lot of ammo into another empty duffle that will be less conspicuous to carry around than his weapons cases. He finishes gearing up and gestures at the remaining supplies. “You need anything?” He asks Elektra. She digs into the cache with apparent relish, and Frank hands a billy club to Red, who takes it with apparent surprise and a muttered thanks.

While Elektra is foraging, Frank pulls out the burner he kept here and dials Karen’s number.

She doesn’t answer. “Sweetheart, it’s me,” he says when it clicks over to voicemail, ignoring the way Red stiffens at the endearment. “I escaped from Fisk, I need you to please call me as soon as you get this, okay?”

He hangs up and calls David.

“Uh, hello?” David says when he picks up.

“It’s me.”

“Frank!” David says. “Oh, shit.” Frank squeezes his eyes shut, because whatever David says next is not going to be good.

“What’s going on?”

“Uh,” David says. “Fuck. Karen’s gone to trade herself to Fisk for your freedom.”

“Didn’t you try to stop her?” Frank yells. “Never mind, where is she?”

David gives him an address. “We tried to rescue you first, but you weren’t in the warehouse, man.”

“Fisk has some kind of secret lair,” Frank explains impatiently. “What am I walking into?”

“It was supposed to be a simple trade, she walks in, you walk out,” David explains. “She went in just before you called.”

“Christ. We’ll be there in five minutes.” He hangs up.

Karen’s heart is pounding. She can feel every beat as a burning throb in the bullet wound on her arm.

She supposes she should consider herself lucky that the painful line across her bicep is the only souvenir she has from her little adventure on the roof of Fisk’s warehouse. Her dip in the river had left her cold but otherwise unharmed. Curtis had fished her out of the water and patched her up. She was under strict orders from him not to go swimming with an open wound again anytime soon, and to take a full round of antibiotics to make sure she didn’t get an infection.

“Are you sure about this?” David asks in her ear. Fisk said no guns, but he didn’t say anything about communication, and she let David give her an intraoral GPS tracker. The downside of swallowing it is that it’ll be out of her system in a day or two, but she isn’t expecting to live that long. She thinks of how furious Frank is going to be when he figures out what her plan is, and her heart breaks.

“Yes,” she says, sounding way more confident than she feels. David mutters something that sounds a lot like “Frank’s gonna kill me,” and then wishes her luck in a much clearer tone.

“It’ll be fine,” Karen says, as much to reassure herself as David. She’s had no sleep, and the plan is to trade herself for Frank and hope Fisk doesn’t double cross them. It’s a long shot at best. If she had more time—

She opens the door to the gallery. From the outside, the place looks completely deserted at this hour of the morning with all the lights off. She steps fully inside, letting the door drift shut behind her. It’s eerily silent, and if not for the unlocked door, she might think no one else is here.

“I’m not armed,” she calls, holding her hands out at her sides, palms open. She has nothing with her except the clothes on her back and the earpiece David gave her. Her hair is loose, covering her ears, and she’s still wearing Frank’s hoodie.

Fisk steps out from behind a partial wall near the back of the open space, impeccably dressed as always. He’s in white from head to toe today, except for a blood red tie.

“Right on time,” he says, smiling pleasantly. It makes her fingers itch for a gun.

“Fisk,” she says. Her voice isn’t as even as she’d like. “You look better in orange.” She has the satisfaction of watching the smile fade from his face.

“Check her,” he bites out. Two men — Fisk’s personal bodyguards, from the look of them, dressed almost like normal human beings in plain black suits — materialize from the shadows, and one comes forward to pat her down. She must make a face, because Fisk smirks.

“You didn’t really think I’d be so careless, did you, Miss Page?”

Of course she knew he’d have her checked for weapons. It’s the only reason she didn’t bring a gun.

“Where is he?” She asks when the guard nods at Fisk and steps back.

“All in due time,” Fisk says.

“No. I want to see him now, Fisk, or I’m walking right back out of here,” Karen snaps.

Fisk sighs, looking disappointed. “I was afraid you’d see it that way,” he says, gesturing at the second guard. At Fisk’s signal, before Karen can so much as dodge, the guard pulls a pistol from his holster and shoots her.

The shot hits her in the throat, and she flinches, reaching up, expecting to find a lot of blood. What she finds instead is a tranquilizer dart. She blinks as her vision blurs.

“You bastard,” she slurs. Her knees buckle, but she’s out before she hits the floor.

Frank has never run so fast in his life, but the gallery is empty when he gets there. The door is locked, so he pulls his sidearm out just as Red and Elektra catch up.

“No—“ Red starts, but he’s too late, Frank is already shooting out the plate glass windows.

“There’s an alarm,” he continues, just as it goes off.

“I look like I give a shit?” Frank asks, stepping into the gallery and scanning the place. He does a quick circuit, calling Karen’s name, but there’s no answer. He finds nothing in the main room — no sign of Karen or Fisk. The office at the back is just as empty, and Frank starts to feel a little desperate.

“Frank?” Red calls from the main room.

“You got something?”

“Earpiece,” Red says, dropping the small chunk of plastic in Frank’s palm. “I can hear someone talking on the other end, sounds like he knows you.”

He puts the earpiece in his ear and is relieved to hear David’s voice.

“Frank!”

“Hey, it’s me— where is she, David?”

“Fisk took her, they just left,” David says.

“Where did they go?”

“Hang on let me pull up her tracker...” David says, continuing to mutter to himself while Frank rolls his eyes and clenches his fists to keep from interrupting.

“Okay... she’s—“ David cuts off, and Frank has to bite his tongue to keep from shouting at his friend. “She’s underground?”

“Why does that sound like a question?”

“Well, I don’t know, why would she be underground?” David asks defensively.

“Maybe because Fisk is a goddamn melodramatic psychopath and has a secret supervillain lair,” Frank snaps. “Where do you think I’ve been all night?”

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Wait, how’d you get out of there—“

“I had some help escaping,” Frank says. “It’s not important. You gonna tell me how to find her or not?”

“Right,” David says. “There’s gotta be an access point somewhere, try the back room.”

“The office is empty,” Frank says.

“Not the office — there’s a storage room in the back.”

Murdock is already heading to the back of the room. “Back here,” he calls after a moment. Frank joins him in the corner, where a door is hiding behind a large sculpture. It’s locked, and Frank wastes no time shooting the mechanism, trying not to smirk when Red shakes his head.

“I thought you said storage room,” Frank grumbles at David.

“Yeah?”

“This is practically an entire warehouse,” Frank explains. Despite the place’s size, they find their entrance quickly. Fisk must have been in a hurry, because the trap door isn’t even fully closed, let alone hidden from sight. The three of them stand over it for a moment, and Frank glances at Elektra, then Red.

“You ready?” He asks them.

“For anything,” Elektra says, grinning at him. Red nods, and Frank leads the way through the trap door.

“They can’t be that far ahead of us,” Frank says. “Red, can you, you know... hear anything?”

Murdock stands very still in the tunnel, head cocked like a bird. Frank tries desperately for some patience, but it’s only a few moments before Red takes off.

She wakes to the sound of gunfire in the distance.

She shifts uncomfortably, disoriented. It takes a few moments, but she manages to pry her eyes open enough to look around. She’s slumped at a table in a dismal room. A lamp hanging from the ceiling throws harsh shadows against the walls.

Karen sits up with a groan, wondering where Fisk is.

“Welcome back,” he says, a sinister disembodied voice in the darkness behind her, and she has to fight back a shudder. He comes around the table and takes the seat across from her. She eyes him, not bothering to disguise her distaste.

“What’s with the kidnapping?” She asks, even though she knows what he’s up to. Fisk loves the sound of his own voice, so she knows he won’t be able to resist giving her all the information she could ever want from him.

“Do you hear that?” He asks, cocking his head and letting the silence between them fill with the distant battle. There’s more gunfire, and she can hear the familiar sound of Frank roaring in rage. She has to grab the arms of her chair to keep from getting up and trying to go to him.

“I must confess, when I realized Mr. Castle had escaped this morning, I thought my plan might fall apart,” Fisk says. Karen grits her teeth at the realization that Fisk didn’t even have Frank to trade. Not that it changes anything — she couldn’t take the chance. “But this is all working out even better than I could have hoped.”

“I know what you’re after,” she says. “And it isn’t going to work.”

“Oh, really, Miss Page?” Fisk’s lip curls derisively. “And why is that?”

“Because Daredevil is dead,” she says flatly. Fisk’s eyes narrow.

“You’re lying,” he snarls, and Karen laughs.

“Why are you so fixated on him?” she says, staring down this man who has terrorized her dreams and waking hours for years. “What did he ever do to you?”

“You mean besides thwarting my plans time and again? He killed someone very important to me,” Fisk says, his civilized facade cracking. She doesn’t think he notices that the firefight is getting closer, the gunshots echoing louder in the small space.

“James Wesley,” she says, the name falling between them like an anvil. Fisk visibly flinches, confusion clouding his features.

“You’ve been so busy blaming Daredevil for his disappearance that you never stopped to consider that murder really isn’t his MO,” she says. “It’s really not like you, Wilson.”

“What are you saying?” He demands.

“I’m saying Daredevil isn’t just dead,” she snaps. “He’s also not responsible for Wesley’s death.” Fisk flinches again. “Oh, yes, he’s really dead,” Karen says, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you a secret, Wilson. Wesley died quickly. He didn’t suffer much, more’s the pity.”

“How do you know this?” Fisk says, and Karen laughs again.

“You just can’t see past the little melodrama you’ve written between you and Daredevil, can you?” She says. “But he isn’t the person you should be worried about.” By now the gunshots are so loud that Frank must be right outside this little room, and Karen braces herself to make a run for it.

“ _I killed Wesley_ ,” she snarls. “I shot him seven times. The clip ran out, but he deserved more.”

Fisk surges to his feet with an inhuman snarl, but Karen is already running for the door. She bursts from the smaller room into a larger space — and into the middle of a pitched battle. She doesn’t stop, crouching low to avoid the worst of the gunfire.

“Karen!” Frank roars from across the room.

“Frank!” She yells back. “Fisk!” She doesn’t waste her breath on anything else, knowing Frank will understand. He lays down some cover fire for her as she stumbles into cover behind a large crate so she can get a proper look at the situation.

Frank is a dozen feet away, dressed for battle and grappling an enormous Russian in a bright orange tracksuit — one of the Ilyas, she realizes, recognizing him from the photos David showed her the day before. The other Ilya lies dead at Frank’s feet, his blonde hair matted to his head with blood, eyes open and sightless. Matt and Elektra are... _not dead_ , and fighting back to back in the center of the room. There are Russians everywhere, and then Fisk wades into the fray, knocking his own men aside in his haste to get to Karen.

“Karen Page!” He thunders, pushing past two men who are fighting with Elektra. “I’ll kill you! I’ll wipe you off the face of the earth! No one you love will be left when I’m done!”

Matt jumps into Fisk’s path, cutting him off, and while the two men are fighting she darts from her hiding place and scoops a gun off the floor. She shoots Frank’s assailant three times in the back, and the hulking man stiffens in Frank’s grip before sliding to the floor.

“Karen, no!” Matt shouts, his distraction giving Fisk an opening to land several punishing blows to his torso.

Elektra steps in to give Matt a moment to catch his breath, her sai flashing, red with blood. She moves with the speed of a striking cobra, leaving smears of blood from her sai on Fisk’s pristine white suit, but somehow none of her slashes draw fresh blood. Karen shoots a couple more Russians as she circles Fisk and Elektra, waiting for her moment to strike. Frank covers her back, taking out anyone who dares to come too close. It takes her a moment of watching to realize Fisk’s beautiful bespoke suit must have some kind of armor built into it, protecting him from Elektra’s attacks.

Karen hits the floor with a gasp as Matt tackles her, concrete debris flying up as a bullet tears through the space she was occupying moments before. Frank spins with deadly accuracy to shoot her would-be assassin. At the same time, Fisk loses patience in his fight with Elektra and tosses her aside like a rag doll. She hits the wall and lands in a heap on the floor. Fisk takes a step toward Karen, still in a tangle on the floor with Matt, but then Frank is there.

The fight that follows is brutal. Fisk has weight and reach on his side, but Frank has training and shear determination to fuel his blows. Both men are roaring furiously at each other, hitting each other with no finesse. Karen struggles to her feet without taking her eyes off the deadly dance that’s playing out in the center of the room. She sees Elektra roll to her feet out of the corner of her eye, and then Frank gets the upper hand, landing a vicious elbow to the side of Fisk’s head.

When Fisk falls to his knees, blinking dazedly at Frank, a feral smile spreads across Karen’s face. Here at last is the end to three years of terror and apprehension and always looking over her shoulder. Frank pulls his pistol from the holster on his hip and presses the muzzle to Fisk’s forehead, staring the man down.

“Frank, no,” Matt says, lunging forward in a last desperate attempt to prevent Frank from killing their nemesis.

The gunshot that rings through the room is deafening, and everyone flinches.

“No.” Matt’s protest is a strangled gurgle as Fisk’s body slumps to the ground, a bloody, pulpy mess where his head used to be.

Karen lowers her hands, the pistol she’d grabbed earlier still smoking. Matt says her name, his voice filled with horror and denial, but she has eyes only for Frank. Frank, who holds her gaze, his own dark and clear and steady as always. Frank, who nods, unsurprised that she would take that shot. He holsters his gun and steps around Matt, arms reaching for Karen, and she stumbles into his embrace with a sob of relief, the gun falling from her grasp to clatter on the floor.

“You did it, sweetheart,” he whispers in her ear, holding her up when her knees buckle. “You’re okay, we’re safe, I’ve got you.” She leans into him, breathing in his familiar scent of gunsmoke and blood.

“Oh, god, Frank,” she gasps. He’s warm and solid in her arms, and she pulls back just far enough to kiss him.

It’s desperate and hungry, lips and teeth and tongue, and her entire body sings with life everywhere he touches her. She could stay in this moment forever, kissing Frank, and she probably would if Elektra didn’t interrupt them by pointedly clearing her throat. Their lips part, and Frank smiles at her, touching his forehead to hers before they turn to look at Elektra.

“Well, this all turned out rather well, I think,” she says, kicking a mobster in the head when he stirs on the floor near her feet. Karen covers her mouth to stifle the wholly inappropriate giggle that bubbles up her throat. Franks arms tighten around her and he nuzzles her hair, pressing a kiss to her ear. “Shall we call the cops, let them clean this up?” Elektra continues.

“I’ve got it,” Frank says, pressing a finger to his ear. “You still there, David?”

With an effort, Karen relaxes her grip on Frank until they’re standing side by side, his hand slipping down her arm to twine with hers. She looks around — they’re surrounded by piles of unconscious and dead gangsters, and she imagines that somewhere in this labyrinth is a server room with a lot of very valuable information that hopefully the NYPD can use to their advantage. Frank is talking to David, asking him to remove any security footage that could be used to identify the four of them.

“Karen,” Matt says, walking up to her. There’s a wariness in his steps, like he’s approaching a stranger. “I don’t understa—“

She slaps him. “What the fuck, Matt. You’ve been alive this whole time?” She demands, furious — but then she’s pulling him in for a hug, because as infuriating as he always is, she really did miss him. “You could have called,” she whispers, as he carefully returns her hug.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he pulls away. “But...” he gestures around in confusion. “I don’t... this isn’t you.” It comes out like a question.

Karen sighs, following his gesture. She looks at Fisk’s body, and all she feels is relief, like an enormous weight has been lifted from her shoulders. “It is, though,” she says, nodding. “This was always part of me. You just didn’t want to see it.”

He shrugs uncomfortably, but Elektra comes up and loops an arm around his waist.

“I’m hoping we’ll be friends,” she says to Karen. “You’ve got style.”

Karen laughs, and nods. “I’d like that.”

“Alright,” Frank says, finally finished with David. “We just need to wipe our prints off of anything we touched and then we can all get out of here.”

It doesn’t take long to clear the place of any evidence they were there, and then they wend there way back to street level, coming out on a random street corner. They shove Elektra’s sai and Matt’s club into Frank’s duffle full of weapons and take a cab to the Lieberman’s house.

Curt checks everyone over and declares them all healthy, other than a few bumps and bruises. The bag Karen had packed what feels like a lifetime ago comes in handy now, because she and Frank both have non-blood-splattered clothing to change into. David comes clean to Frank, who predictably tries to murder him — but Karen is there to hold him back before he does something he’ll regret. She calls Foggy to let him know everything is okay.

“I’ll be there in an hour,” he says. He’d only taken Marci as far as Atlantic City before holing up in a motel room.

“Is she still going to marry you after the indignity of being stuck in a crappy motel room for two days?” Karen laughs.

“Ha, ha, very funny,” he mutters, before admitting, “it was a close call.”

She gives him the Liebermans’ address. “I‘ll tell you the whole story when you get here.”

They order pizza for lunch and Sarah and Elektra make a beer run, and they all spend a few hours watching mindless television and catching each other up on everything that’s happened. Foggy and Marci arrive and there’s a tense moment where Karen thinks he might actually punch Matt, but they’ve been through too much to let this ruin their friendship.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you,” she tells Foggy later. “I just couldn’t say it over the phone.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says, frowning across the room at Matt. He shakes his head. “He’s a pain in the ass, but at least he’s not dead, you know?” She nods — she gets it.

“So, you and the Punisher, huh?” He says, and she blushes.

“He’s just Frank,” she says. Her eyes find Frank, frowning seriously at Leo as she explains something to him, a book in one hand while she gestures with the other.

“He’s just madly in love with you,” Foggy corrects, and she smiles. “I’m happy for you, Kare.” She hugs him, relieved that everyone she loves is alive and healthy and willing to put up with each others’ questionable taste in romantic partners.

Karen ends up on the couch, snuggled up next to Frank. She’s half asleep in a patch of warm afternoon sunlight when he tugs gently on the sleeve of her hoodie.

“This looks familiar,” he murmurs, pressing his face into her hair to hide his smile — but she can hear it in his voice, so it’s a wasted effort.

“You’ll be seeing a lot of it,” she mumbles back. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s very comfortable.” He laughs, a soft rumble in her ear.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

Frank gathers a sleepy Karen up and they say their goodbyes. Sarah makes them promise to come back for dinner the next weekend, and Red and Nelson get Karen to agree to meet them at Josie’s the next evening.

She takes advantage of the bench seat of his truck to sit as close to him as possible, but they don’t talk much. He holds her hand and she shifts gears for him so they won’t have to let go.

Karen’s apartment is dim and quiet. His gear is scattered over the kitchen table, and he smiles.

“Found my stash, huh?”

She bumps her shoulder into his. “You could’ve kept it here if you’d just asked,” she says, heading for the bedroom. He follows her, sitting on the edge of her bed to unlace his boots while she rummages around in her dresser.

“Shower?” She asks, and he looks up. Her hair is a mess, her clothes rumpled, his hoodie hanging off her shoulder, but she’s smiling and his breath catches, heart stuttering because he’s never seen anything so beautiful before.

“C’mere,” he mutters, pulling her into his arms. She leans down and presses her lips to his, soft and warm, and he lays back on the bed, pulling her down on top of him.

It’s a long time before they make it to the shower.

He wakes at dawn the next morning in a tangle of sheets and Karen. She’s still asleep, a small smile in the corner of her mouth. He kisses that smile and feels it grow under his lips.

“Go back to sleep,” Karen mumbles. He wants to wake her up and tell her again that he loves her. He wants to thank her for never letting him go. He wants her to know that she is his second life, his after.

For now, he pulls her closer and does as he’s told.

He has the rest of his life to tell her about it.

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this fic while at work. They play the 80s Sirius XM station and Billy Joel’s Tell Her About It came on and I had this crazy idea - what if David kidnapped Frank and used this song as psychological torture to get Frank to admit his feelings to Karen?   
> Well obviously nothing about that situation would go as planned. And here we have this fic, the nuttiest thing I’ve ever written.  
> Also I cried when I read the ending during editing because I am a sappy sappy bitch.  
> Love y’all


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